


By a Spider's Thread

by Faisalliot



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: -slaps Tom on the head-, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, As he should be., BAMF Harry Potter, Because I Cannot Be Dicked into Being Entirely Historically Accurate, Blatant and Unapologetic Merging of Modern Popculture with the Past, F/F, F/M, Illustrated, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, It's treated as horrific as it is and the abuser gets murdered, M/M, Magically Powerful Harry Potter, Sane Tom Riddle, Slytherin Harry Potter, Teenage Tom Riddle, There are elements of nonconsent but it's never like...GROSS about it, Tom Riddle is A Stupid Fuck, on screen and violently, this bad boy can hold SO much stupid!!!
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-09
Updated: 2021-02-19
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:27:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 60,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24565372
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Faisalliot/pseuds/Faisalliot
Summary: The general consensus is that stories are just stories. Nothing more, nothing less. Yes, there are morals and lessons to learn from such parables and fables, but at the end, people believe that stories are rarely rooted in reality. That’s exactly what makes them so dangerous. There's a grain of fact in every story, no matter how big or small, and Harry learns this the hard way when a fairy tale Arthur tells him comes to life, and he’s forced to abandon the wizarding world at the worst possible time—by winding up stuck in 1942 for six months.Believe it or not, being Tom Riddle's unwitting roommate isn't even the worst part of it.
Relationships: Dudley Dursley & Harry Potter, Harry Potter & Arthur Weasley, Harry Potter & Molly Weasley, Harry Potter/Tom Riddle, Hermione Granger & Harry Potter & Ron Weasley
Comments: 338
Kudos: 494
Collections: Harry Potter, Harry in the Past





	1. A Curious Question Indeed

**Author's Note:**

> This is the part where you go “well shit, what IS the worst part of 1942?” and then read the story to find out lol
> 
> This is Tomarry. No, it's not The Weird kind, I promise.
> 
> basically, a freaky ring in the forbidden forest that Arthur told Harry a story about yeets Harry into 1942 in an alternate timeline, and while he's there he accidentally loves the psycho out of Tom Riddle and they become a thing. Whoops.
> 
> Harry and Tom are both 15 in this one, y'all. It’s Tom’s fifth year in 1942

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry visits Arthur for the third time in St Mungos once Grimmauld Place proves too overwhelming to bear, and winds up becoming very educated in the tales of Beedle and Bard. It's wholesome, dammit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aw shit, here we go.

The novelty of entering St. Mungos had quickly died once Harry had flitted past the mannequin for his third time. 

Frankly, something about it had morphed from extraordinarily ugly to straight unnerving, he thought, as he bustled through the cool, invisible veil into the reception room, and he took great care to not think about its one eyelash-less eye, or the eerie, dustless look of the nylon dress it modeled.

He wondered, instead, how long it had been there. 

Who had made the mannequin? Had it been a muggle, or a mage? Who had sat down and took the time out of their day to construct it? And what was its original purpose? Perhaps it had been intended to be exactly what it was―a model for an outfit meant to touch living skin. Or maybe its creation had been a farce all along―maybe it was always meant to guard St. Mungos. Quite possibly, though, the answer was both―someone had simply stolen the mannequin away from its leisurely, non-magical job and repurposed it as a guard. But why? What was it about the mannequin that had made a mage look at it and think, “ah, yes, this will be the perfect cover for a magical hospital” and enchant it? 

And what of the dress it was covered with? Who had sewn it together―human hand or thoughtless machine? Who had pulled it over the mannequin’s unyielding body and left it? Where had the material come from? Who bought it? Where had the buttons come from, the buckles, the threads? 

Thoughts like these had been plaguing Harry for days now, because they were quite honestly the only line of defense left to prevent him from losing his shit entirely.

He ignored the prod on his back, an unwelcome courtesy from Moody, and quickened his pace, making purposeful strides towards the first floor. Yes, indeed, if Harry did not think of meaningless things, he would worry, and if Harry worried, he would have to stave off yet another meltdown. He rather thought that he'd had enough of those, but lately, his body had been doing everything in it's power to prove him wrong. So now, life had become an on-going game of "what dumb shit can Harry think about to distract himself from the fact that the world is fucking burning?" and while the lot of it really _was_ a bunch of useless fluff to block out the heavier things he wasn't equipped to deal with just yet, they were still quite effective. Some of his more recent victories had been found in the cracks in the walls of Grimmauld Place and where, exactly, they had come from, the logistics of fairy lights in the wizard world (he still wasn't quite sure how they worked here), and the uncaring nature of snowflakes, namely the lack of regard they had for the things they covered. 

Unfortunately, as effectively useless as these thoughts were, they weren't enough that morning. Hence why Harry was here. 

The receptionist behind the desk coughed as he passed but said nothing, and he dodged a speed-walking, green-berobed healer with a mumbled apology. Moody made a strange rumbling noise behind him, like he was trying to surreptitiously dislodge a bit of hair from the back of his throat, and Harry tried to relax his shoulders. Worry, worry, worry, there had to be no more of it. Worrying was quickly becoming Harry's least favorite pastime, especially because worrying was exactly why he'd just willfully put himself through the torment of looking at St. Mungo's entrance mannequin. Worrying was why, for the third time, he was on his way to visit Mr. Weasley and feeling foolish the entire way. 

Honestly, he’d already visited once the day after Mr. Weasley had been admitted―the 18th―with the whole Weasley clan in tow, and once again three days after that with Mrs. Weasley. He had hoped that those visits would be enough to settle him down a bit, but clearly, it had not been. Harry just couldn’t get the attack out of his mind. Something about the whole experience had rattled him deeply. He just couldn’t shake away the phantom sensations of fabric gliding past his lips, the crunch of shattering, unyielding bone beneath his teeth, nor the gurgling stream of rich, warm blood flooding into his yearning mouth. It made him nauseous. It made him scared. It made him _angry._ And Angry-Harry did very stupid things, apparently, like border on hyperventilation in the bathroom at one in the morning. Loud enough, despite his best efforts, for Mrs. Weasley to wander in, bleary-eyed and concerned, to pull the toothbrush out of his mouth and mend his furiously bleeding gums. Which was what had been making him panic more in the first place, because his own stupid arsehole of a brain had convinced him that he was tasting Mr. Weasley’s blood again. 

So, yeah, here Harry was, bothering Mr. Weasley for the third time with the flimsy excuse that he might appreciate the company on Christmas Eve.

If he was being perfectly candid though, his little meltdown in the bathroom that morning had very little to do with his decision to swing by again. Well, not _little,_ but when lumped in with every other reason he was here, it was slightly less substantial. For one thing, the growing tension in the house was unbearable― Harry swore he couldn't walk more than three paces without seeing someone wringing their hands. Not only that, but Kreacher’s general lurking was putting him on edge, with all the muttering in the hall reminding him terribly of the Basilisk in the pipes a couple years back. On top of _that,_ Sirius was being _too_ lackadaisical just as much as everyone around him was treating him like Grandma’s precious china, Fred and George were both freaking him out with all of the goddamned apparating, he couldn’t sleep to save his own life because he couldn’t stop thinking of Mr. Weasley, and _Mrs._ Weasley was about to drive him up the Eiffel Tower with her smothering. 

Harry felt like the stress of it all was about to swallow him. He was three steps away from blowing up and breaking the hell down, and that was a brand of hurt he wasn’t ready to face and frankly, felt like he never _would_ be. Especially now. Not with―not with everything. It was just too much. 

He finally made it to the ward Mr. Weasley was in, and pushed open the door. He peered around, trying to remember which bed was Mr. Weasley’s, and had a brief moment of panic where he wondered if Mr. Weasley had been moved somewhere else. He calmed down ever so slightly once Mr. Weasley caught sight of him and immediately beamed, waving him over.

“Harry!”

Phew.

Harry let a smile crack his lips and abandoned Moody, hurrying over a bit faster. “I’ve come to bother you again,” He said, nodding amicably to Matthew Cork, the apparent werewolf in the opposite bed who had busied himself with a newspaper, and sank into the chair next to Mr. Weasley. 

“Ah, you never bother me.” Mr. Weasley pulled himself upright with a wince, sighed, and prattled on with, “Quite the opposite, actually―here I was, just thinking about spending this Christmas Eve all on my lonesome, and here you are. You’ve splendid timing, Harry, truly.” 

In return, Harry gave Mr. Weasley a tight sort of smile, which was the best he could muster at the moment, and felt his stomach sink a little when he frowned a bit and seemed to search his face. Harry already knew he was done for when Mr. Weasley’s expression softened, but that didn’t stop him from feeling embarrassingly close to screaming when he said, very gently, “Alright?”

 _'I want you to take a wild guess, Arthur,'_ came a nasty internal thought, and Harry shoved it down. Seeing no point in feigning perfect health, Harry sagged a bit and brushed Mr. Weasley off with a passable,

“Just didn’t sleep much, ‘s all.” 

It felt rude to outline any of his own problems when Mr. Weasley was the one between the two of them who was cooped up in a hospital bed, and it wasn’t as if he was lying―really, he _had_ barely slept. What did it matter if there were nine other things that were wrong too? Tiredness was enough of an excuse, and Mr. Weasley looked satisfied by it―relieved, even, which was good because that was exactly what Harry wanted. 

“Oh, what’re we going to do with you, son?” Mr. Weasley sighed, leaning over with some difficulty to cuff Harry on the forehead, though it was far less of a cuff and much more of a gentle, familiar bonk. 

It cheered Harry a bit, just enough for him to send Mr. Weasley a more genuine smile, which made the man look pleased. Nothing to say came to mind, and that was all well and good because Mr. Weasley turned to crack a bit of a joke at his wolfy roommate, Cork. “Honestly, out of all my kids, he’s the only one who’s bothered to show up more than once so far. Those knuckleheads better turn up tomorrow for Christmas, or I’m going to give ‘em the ol’ one-two.” Mr. Weasley laughed raspily, and went to continue, but he was cut off by a rather loud, indignant snort from Cork. Upon noticing the ill-timing of that, Cork straightened a bit with a light flush, and cleared his throat.

“Sorry about that.” He nodded down to the paper with a grimace and said, “It’s just the amount of swill in this edition of the Prophet is almost unbearable. I mean, honestly, it just _smells_ like bullshit, and it’s not helping that they’re really taking the mickey out of you with this one, Potter.” He turned the paper around and pointed to show off what he meant, and Harry could’ve groaned at the bolded sentence he was indicating on page three. “ _‘Up to ‘Snow’ Good: Flabbergasting Festive Fables Worthy of the Boy Who Lived’_.” Cork read scornfully, and laughed in a bitter sort of way as he recounted, “The whole thing is just a bunch of outdated Christmas parables and shite filled with thinly-veiled insults about you. Honestly, you’d think they’d have found something better to do than slander a teenager by now. Running out of ideas, they are.” And then he proceeded to recount one of the stories just to mention it’s little quip about him at the end, which apparently said something about the story being odd enough to make, “even Potter’s own head spin with questions”. 

It was so bloody obnoxious that the Prophet was _still_ taking defamatory blows at him and it was the absolute last thing Harry had wanted to hear about, but the welling anger in him was completely drowned out by confusion. A Burglar’s Christmas was the title of the story Cork had picked out to read, and apparently, the whole bit was about some man wandering the south side of Chicago on Christmas Eve, living in poverty after cutting himself off from his wealthy family, who just decided to be a burglar on the fly and...wandered into someone’s house to steal their things, no plan in mind. It was only mid-robbery that he noticed that all the things he was grabbing were familiar, just in time for his mom to walk in and hug him. Willa Cather must have been a bit of an odd duck. What kind of a coincidence was it that the subject of her(?) story stole his own possessions? What kind of person sat down and thought, “Yeah, I’m going to make this bloke rob his own house” and called it a day? Perhaps the article’s insult here had been onto something―Harry really _did_ have questions. 

Apparently the mystification had shown up on his face, because Cork looked him over and started laughing. “Yeah, I don’t know either. Muggles write some mental things sometimes.” 

Mr. Weasley, however, was just shaking his head. “I don’t know if that’s just a muggle being a muggle, Cork. If it was really written in the 1800s, that seems pretty par for the course to me. All old stories sound barmy in one way or another―like, er…the tale of Babbitty Rabbitty and the Cackling Stump? Remember the whole thing where the muggle was trying to teach the king magic, and it was really just two muggles waving sticks about?”

Cork lit up and he added, “Oh, yes―I know what you’re on about. Personally, I found the whole bit with Babbitty talking behind the stump rather odd. How loud can a rabbit be? And why didn’t any of the muggles notice the rabbit in the first place? Surely they were in something of a half-circle form―at least _one_ of them must’ve noticed something amiss with that.”

Mr. Weasley and Cork kept prattling on from there, talking about golden statues and axe strokes, but Harry was entirely bewildered. What were they talking about? The bit about the golden statue sounded pretty cool and all but _what?_ Harry _really_ wasn’t one to ask questions, but this was one of those rare, benign occasions where he just _had_ to know, so he tapped Mr. Weasley’s forearm, kept the confusion on his face for emphasis, and asked, “What are you two talking about?”

Mr. Weasley exchanged a slow look with Cork, and then murmured after a moment, “Ah, of course, of course you wouldn’t know…”

Harry grew a bit indignant with that―of _course_ he didn’t, that’s why he was asking.

“He hasn’t heard of Babbitty Rabbitty?” 

Mr. Weasley clasped a hand on Harry’s shoulder in a friendly gesture, and explained to Cork before Harry could do it himself, “He was raised by muggles.”

Cork frowned, and went to say something, and, annoyed by being spoken about as if he wasn’t there to talk for himself, Harry heaved tiredly, “Oh, shut it already. Yes, I have no idea who Babbitty Rabbitty is and yes, I am a poor little boy who was raised by savage muggles with no knowledge of our _culture._ Could someone _please_ just tell me?”

Mr. Weasley and Cork seemed to consider him for a while, then exchanged a pitying look that made Harry want to bristle, but then Cork shrugged and began to launch into the story, starting off with a promising, “Okay, so, basically this stupid muggle king character wants to kidnap wizards to try and steal their magic, and—" but before he could get much further, Mr. Weasley made a peculiar “buh-buh-buh!” noise and held a hand out, effectively halting the start of Cork’s explanation.

Harry and Cork stared.

Some of Mr. Weasley's freckles disappeared in the flush that overtook his face. “Listen, er, this was one of my favorite stories to tell my kids when they were younger, and I just about have it memorized since they’d make me do it so often since they—er—since they always preferred it when I read. Would you―would you two humor me and let me tell it?”

Cork paused, but inclined a head towards Harry. “What do you think, kid?”

Harry felt like he might find it a little too baby-ish for him, but he figured that he couldn’t find a reason why Mr. Weasley shouldn’t, so he gave the go-ahead. He had nothing better to do with himself, and if it could forestall how long it'd be before he had to go back to Grimmauld with _more_ people who didn't seem to think he could speak for himself either, far be it from him to stop it. 

Mr. Weasley, bless him, looked a little excited, and off he went, starting off in a dramatic, wizened tone of voice, “A long time ago, in a land far away, there was a kingdom ruled by a foolish King who decided that he should be the only one to have magical powers. He formed an army, which he called the Brigade of Witch-Hunters, and armed them with black hounds. At the same time, he wanted an Instructor in Magic, so he made calls for a wizard or witch from one of the nearby villages to teach him. Of course, nobody was foolish enough to dare to volunteer, except for a cunning Charlatan who had no magical powers. He convinced the foolish King that he would be able to teach him by performing a few simple tricks. He was then appointed as the Grand Sorcerer in Chief, the King's Private Magic Master.”

“What a tosser.” Harry said blandly, but leaned in all the same. 

“Once in position, the Charlatan told the King that he needed money so that he could purchase a magic wand, precious rubies for casting charms and silver chalices for storing potions. This was another trick; the Charlaton only wanted the treasures for himself. He stored them in his house and returned to the palace, unaware that he was being watched. Babbitty, the King's washerwoman, saw the Charlatan snapping two twigs from one of the King's trees and disappearing into the palace.” Mr. Weasley waved his hands about as if pretending to hold a wand, and Harry fought a laugh. “The Charlatan gave one of the twigs to the King, assuring him that it was a powerful wand. A wand, however, that would only work when the King was worthy of its powers. Each morning, the King and the Charlatan practiced in the grounds, shouting nonsense whilst waving around their wands. One morning Babbitty was watching their foolishness from the window of her little cottage. She laughed so loud that the King could hear her, which made him very upset and instantly stop his chanting. He was fed up of practicing and wanted results."

Harry, who knew very acutely just how well that usually went, suppressed a snort. Forcing magic―if you had it, that was―was never a good idea. Seamus had learned that lesson many, many time in first year, what with all the times he'd lost his eyebrows. Harry's lips quirked at the memory, but the small smile died a quick death when he remembered how Seamus had been treating him this year. 

The King decided that the next day he would invite all the court to watch him perform magic with the help of his teacher. The Charlatan tried to back out, since he knew neither the king nor himself knew any new magic. ‘I have to go out of town!’ He cried, but the King told him his trip could be delayed. ‘I must tend to my family,’ The Charlatan tried again, but the King was not impressed, knowing that he had none.” Mr. Weasley chose a nasally, high voice for the Charlatan, and then, “‘Foolish man!’ The King told him. ‘Should you leave, I’ll send the Brigade of Witch-Hunters after your hide!’” Mr. Weasley chose a deeper, old man voice for this bit and Harry huffed a laugh at it, thinking vaguely of Dumbledore. If Mr. Weasley went so far as to do voices, Harry was pretty sure he knew why everyone preferred him to read aloud. “Now sufficiently stuck, the Charlatan despaired as the King told him when they would perform, and listened in horror as the King decreed that should anyone laugh while the King performed, the Charlatan would be beheaded. In desperation, the Charlatan ran to Babbitty's house the moment he could get away from the king in hopes of spying on her and uncovering something to distract the King and get her fired for the misfortune she had brought upon him, but to his own luck and amazement, he saw the King's sheets washing themselves in the wooden tub behind her. He knew at once that she was a witch―a _real_ witch. And so, the Charlatan tore into her house, thrusted a finger, and he threatened Babbitty that if she did not help him, he would reveal to the King that she was a witch and ensure that the Brigade would hunt her down!”

Cork shook his head. “Bastard!” He cried, and then laughed at himself. "Goddamn, you really _do_ have this memorized, don't you, Arthur?"

Mr. Weasley sent him an amused look, but did not reply, choosing instead to continue. “Amused, Babbitty agreed to help out the poor Charlatan. He instructed Babbitty to hide a bush the next day, and make it seem as if the King himself can do magic. And so, she did―while the Charlatan and the King performed, the crowd was astonished by the disappearance of a hat and a levitating horse. For a moment, it seems the Charlatan would be saved, but then, one of the members of the brigade asked if the King could make his dead dog return to life. The King tried, but Babbitty did not even bother raising her wand, knowing well that no magic, no matter how deep or dark, can truly raise the dead.” The way Mr. Weasley said the closing sentence had an air of importance to it, which was only exacerbated by the noticeable pause afterwards before he continued again. Ah. And there was the lesson. “The crowd began to laugh and laugh at the King, and the King demanded to know why the spell wasn't working. In a fit of desperation, the Charlatan pointed to the bush, and told him that a wicked witch was blocking them in an attempt to save his own hide. When the Brigade released their hounds to chase her, Babbitty fled from the bush. She reached a low hedge and vanished from sight.”

“Vanished?” Harry echoed, nudging Mr. Weasley’s arm. 

“Think about the title of the story, Harry.” Mr. Weasley hinted gently, and _oh,_ rabbitty. Babbitty probably became a rabbit. Seeing that he’d worked it out, Mr. Weasley continued, “When the assembled crowd caught up, they found the hounds barking and scrabbling around a tree. The Charlatan, now frightened, told the crowd that Babbitty turned into the tree, and that the tree must be cut down, because she was an ‘evil’ witch. The crowd went wild, and by the end of the madness, the tree went toppling down to the ground. As the crowd started to leave, suddenly there was a cackling coming from the stump. Babbitty told all of them that a true wizard or witch cannot be cut in half, and she suggested that they should try to cut the Charlatan to prove it. The Charlatan confessed all of his wickedness, and he was brought to the dungeon to be punished. Babbitty then uttered a curse, declaring that for every witch or wizard who is harmed, the King would feel the stroke of an axe in his back.” 

Harry winced. “That’s...kind of brutal. An axe stroke?”

“Babbitty was a little barbaric.” Cork said simply, and shrugged. “I dunno, it just made sense when I was a kid.”

Mr. Weasley laughed a bit at that, and shook his head. “I remember the twins being particularly enthused by that bit. One of them, I can’t remember who, sprained their wrist on their bedpost by mimicking the motion of swinging an axe. It wasn’t very funny then, but it is now that they’re older. Anyway, er...how did it―? Ah! The King, fearful of such a curse, henceforth made a proclamation declaring that witches and wizards were to be protected and that they must not be harmed. Babbitty then demanded a statue be built of herself, to remind everyone what has been decreed. The King promised that it would be done, and thus erected a statue of her made of gold. Soon after, an old rabbit bearing a wand in her mouth appeared out of a hole in the stump with a wand in its mouth, revealing that Babbitty had been hiding in her Animagus form, and she left the kingdom, unscathed and unbothered. Forever after, and even today, the statue of Babbitty remains on top of the stump, and no witch or wizard has ever been hurt in that kingdom ever again.” Mr. Weasley finished softly, and Harry must’ve been making some sort of face, because when they locked eyes, his own broke into a little grin. 

Harry was unsure of what to say. He’d never considered the notion of wizarding fairy tales. Not out of ignorance, but more because such a thing had never come up. It wasn’t as if he pranced around Hogwarts waxing poetic about Cinderella or Peter Pan. But...well, he had rather liked the story! He could even pick up on the lessons it was supposed to be teaching just by how Mr. Weasley had recited it. _”Babbitty did not even bother raising her wand, knowing well that no magic, no matter how deep or dark, can truly raise the dead.”_ It was a bit disappointing to hear, but taught children a good, practical lesson. Don’t attempt necromancy, as it will go poorly. And of course, there was the outcome of all the lying―don’t lie or you’re going to get beheaded! Maybe not that extreme, but it showed consequences of lying. And, of course, it pushed the message of “be wary of muggles for your own safety”. It had been a good story, and Harry...well, he wanted to hear a couple more, provided that Mr. Weasley could recall them. He wasn't sure how he ought to ask for such a thing though, and figured it'd be bothersome anyway, so he pushed down his own longing and hunched in his chair. 

He settled, ultimately, on saying, “I can see why everyone liked it when you told the bedtime stories.”

“Me, too. You should volunteer at a muggle library, Arthur, I’m sure they’d love you.” Cork joked dryly, and then inadvertently made Harry’s life a lot easier by asking, in ruder terms than Harry would've ever dared, “D’ya remember any other stories? I’d rather like to pass out soon, and I’m sure I could manage it if you kept going.” 

Cork earned a bland look for that one, but Mr. Weasley looked at Harry, using his face to ask permission. Harry _really_ hadn't been planning on asking, but this was an opportunity, so he nodded immediately, and from there, Harry became very educated on wizarding fairy tales. Mr. Weasley managed to get through “The Warlock’s Hairy Heart” before Moody came back to collect Harry, but a well-aimed look and no small amount of cajoling got him to piss off for a while longer, though not without an exasperated, one-eyed glare. Mr. Weasley prattled on and on, reciting “The Wizard and the Hopping Pot,” and, true to his word, Cork was down for the count about halfway through “The Fountain of Fair Fortune,” which Arthur had some difficulty in recalling. 

By then, Harry was sufficiently spellbound and a bit drowsy himself, and hunkered down on the bed, laying his upper-half on the mattress and gazing at Mr. Weasley as he spoke. They had to take a break in the ending bits of “The Warlock’s Hairy Heart,” because a Healer trainee came in to check over Mr. Weasley and Cork, and after being forced to listen to their conversation by proxy, Harry had to spend a solid _thirty minutes_ frantically dissuading Mr. Weasley and the Trainee from making an attempt at stitches. He was only fifteen, yes, but he knew _damn_ well that putting stitches in venom was _not_ a super smart idea. It had been a losing battle for the most part, and Harry was honestly convinced that the only reason he'd won that argument because it was interrupted by Moody, who had come into the ward again to make another attempt at collecting him, and found himself stuck right in the middle of Harry very nearly screaming, "I _don't_ know how to explain to you that you should _not_ put metal in venom, alright, I'm _not_ a healer but come on, that's just _logic―"_ before Harry had finally noticed him and broke off. They had exchanged a very long look, and by the end of their impromptu stare-down, Moody suddenly made a supremely disgruntled face, threw up his hands, and announced that Harry could just “stay the bloody night for all I care!” which led to Harry realizing that it was almost midnight. The interruption distracted Mr. Weasley and the trainee enough for Harry to all but physically shove the Trainee out of the room with instructions to read a bloody book on when it was appropriate to use stitches, and after Mr. Weasley finally stopped laughing at that, he polished off the rest of “A Warlock’s Hairy Heart,” and then launched into “The Tale of the Three Brothers.” 

With each story, Harry had found himself rather delighted by it, and grew sleepier and sleepier. And yet...this story felt _different._ He listened closely, startlingly awake and aware. He’d been hovering so close to sleep before, but something about this particular tale had Harry’s complete attention. Cork’s snoring faded into the background as Harry focused on each and every single one of the words spilling from Mr. Weasley’s mouth. 

“But though Death searched for the third brother for many years, he was never able to find him. It was only when he had attained a great age that the youngest brother finally took off the Cloak of Invisibility and gave it to his son.” Mr. Weasley intoned in a lyrical sort of way, before his voice lowered and he whispered, finishing the story, “And then he greeted Death as an old friend, went with him gladly, and they departed this life as equals.”

Mr. Weasley’s voice had sounded so soothing, but Harry could not shake the most peculiar feeling that someone had trodden over his grave. It was a very distressing sensation. Mr. Weasley looked at him then, and seemed very surprised to see Harry alert and watching him intently, wide awake. 

“Hm.” He hummed, thoughtful. “I thought you might like that one, but I guess not…?”

A strange sort of anxiety welled up in Harry’s chest and he found himself unable to express it, so he just shook his head. 

Mr. Weasley seemed to pick up on it anyway, and peered at him for a while. Harry couldn’t quite judge for how long, but it must’ve been at least a full minute before Mr. Weasley reached over, and placed his hand on top of Harry’s head. Perhaps he was a bit more freaked out than he thought, because Harry flinched away from the touch before he could stop himself. 

“I’m sorry.” He said quietly, and shook his head, nearly dislodging Mr. Weasley’s hand. 

“Don’t be, Harry, you did nothing wrong.” Mr. Weasley pressed his lips in a line, and after a moment, he heaved a great sigh. “I’ll admit, that was the last of Beedle and Bard, and I’m not confident in my memory of some of the more obscure things…” He trailed off, seeming pensive, before he slowly nodded. “But I can't send you off to sleep scared stiff, now can I? There is one story that I never forgot, and it’s―it’s funny too, because,” He huffed a humorless, short laugh, “Well, I was your age when I overheard it.”

“So, it was the Dark Ages.” Harry said suddenly, trying to fix the mood he'd inadvertently created with a jolt of humor, and got the desired effect when Mr. Weasley turned away to hide an exasperated smile. “Impressive memory, Mr. Weasley.”

“Oh, hush, you. I’m not _that_ old.” Mr. Weasley insisted loftily, and affirmed, “Seriously!” when Harry made an unconvinced face. “But the person I heard it from...she _was.”_

“What do you mean?” 

Mr. Weasley noticed him leaning in, and Harry looked askance, trying to look unimpressed. “What I _mean_ is that this is a story that I heard from a ghost.”

Harry blinked. “What?”

He supposed this shouldn't be surprising, what with how weird the Wizarding World was and how willing the ghosts at Hogwarts were to prattle on about their... _deat_ _h_ story, so to say, but Harry could say this much; he'd never heard something like a bedtime story from a ghost. 

“When I was around your age, I was doing my rounds as a prefect one cold, snowy night. In fact, I do think it was around this time of year. Nothing was amiss and I figured I’d turn in for the night, but no sooner than I turned the corner to head to the courtyard, I heard a voice. At first, I was sure it was a female student, and went towards her to reluctantly take house points and send her off to bed. But as I got closer, I noticed the wispy glow to her, and the way the moonlight shone through her body. Out of curiosity and a desire to not startle her, I leaned against the wall and tried to listen to what she was saying.”

“Which ghost was it?”

Mr. Weasley shrugged. “I’m not sure. I never saw her face. I do remember this, though―even from behind, she was beautiful. Long, flowing locks of silvery hair, a shimmering, floor-length dress with sleeves down to her elbows, and translucent, glowing skin. And her voice was lovely. It had a rich, deep sort of cadence to it, and it echoed pleasantly down the corridor as she spoke to nothing but the empty courtyard. I couldn’t help but listen.” 

“...I won’t tell Mrs Weasley.” Harry joked half-heartedly, and rubbed his eye. “What was she saying?”

“I’ll tell you. All alone in the hallway, she told a story. One that I’ve never found written down, or heard anywhere else. She said, ‘Some speak of a ring,’” Mr. Weasley began, speaking in a low voice, “‘that lies nestled on a dark, crumbling twig in a clearing in the woods. The woods are dark, unforgiving, and many are warned against going within the trees―some might even say it's forbidden,’” He winked at Harry then, who couldn’t help but roll his eyes. 

“So, it’s a fairy tale about the Forbidden Forest.” 

“Yes, I suppose so,” Said Mr. Weasley, and straightened with a slight wince to tell him firmly, “and I know you’ve got a history of tromping around in there, so I’m telling you now, do _not_ go back in there to look for rings. Bad idea.”

Something about this felt uncomfortably significant. 

They stared at each other for a moment and Harry, wanting to dispel the strange feeling that had come over him, muttered, “Well, I wasn’t planning on it, but now that you’ve told me not to, I’ve got to do it on principle now.”

“ _Harry.”_

The boy in question held his hands up in surrender, and sighed into the mattress, going face-down. “I was joking. Honestly, every time I go there, things try to kill me. Why would I _want_ to go in there?”

“You’ve an extraordinary knack for finding things that want you dead. I’m just telling you not to actively pursue them this time around.” Mr. Weasley said, but he looked appeased. “Let’s try this again, er...I’m going to have to ad-lib a little since I only heard this once, but from what I can remember, the story goes…”

Harry relaxed in his chair, and settled in to listen. 

“Some speak of a ring that lies nestled on a dark, crumbling twig in a clearing in the woods. The woods are dark, unforgiving, and many are warned against going within the trees—some might even say it's forbidden. One day, a man ignorant of such cautions ventured into these very woods in search of an animal to slay for his dinner. He wandered for hours, snacking on the various nuts and berries the woods had to offer, and was just about to give up and return home when he found himself facing down a glimmer of golden light. It was quite a distance away, but, enchanted by its beauty, the man stumbled through the leaves and roots, and soon enough, came crashing into a clearing. The clearing was filled with all sorts of briar and bramble, mainly a scattering of dark twigs embedded in the frost-mottled grass, stuck upright like gravestones that grew into jutting, cutting bushes. And in the middle of it all stood a series of five, winding branches, protruding from the earth like a perversion of a hand. And on the second finger, there lied a ring, bathed in an ethereal, beckoning light.”

Well, Harry could appreciate the flow of the story. The alliteration sounded really nice, and Harry wondered just how much of it Mr. Weasley was coming up with on the spot. If the answer was "most of it", he would be very impressed. 

“Something deep inside of the man, buried in his instincts, came hurtling to the forefront of his mind. Something raw. Something primal. Something that spoke to the very marrow of his bones and lit aflame something old―ancient, even. He took a step, through the undergrowth, and felt not the bite of ferns nor the crunch of pebbles beneath his shoes, but a deep, yearning pressure inside of him, that which pulsed a soothing, homely heat beneath his skin, as if he was stood in the middle of a womb, uncaring and ignorant of any other world.”

Alright, womb was an interesting word choice. Harry wasn’t sure if he wanted to know what that felt like.

“The air was perfectly silent, as if holding its breath in anticipation, and filled his lungs with cool, encouraging urgency. There were eyes on the leaves of every tree and in every raised root, and the creatures hiding in the thick shadows watched, and waited. No birds chirped, squawked, or even rustled the branches of the uppermost trees, nothing dashed between the grass blades around him, and no insects chittered in the dirt. There was nothing alive here, except for him and the ground beneath him.”

That sounded...ominous. Harry wasn’t quite sure he trusted this whole ring thing. Ah, that rhymed.

“The man, finally, stood before the ring, and stared down at the branch that cradled it. A strange tingle prickled his palm, and he pried the ring away from its resting place. Without thinking, without feeling, and perhaps against his better judgement, the man placed the ring onto his finger to see how it fit. It fit perfectly, but as he tried to return it he found the task to be impossible. It didn't hurt, it didn't even pinch, but in his struggle to remove the ring, the world seemed to move beneath his feet. It took him quite a while to notice he was no longer surrounded by trees.”

Harry didn’t know how to feel about this. “So he...put on a creepy glowing ring and moved somewhere else? Like a portkey?”

Mr. Weasley shrugged his shoulders. “I suppose it could be likened to that. And yes, he did put on a creepy glowing ring. It’s a story, did you expect him to just walk away?”

“I mean, I would’ve.” Harry said. “Learned that lesson _very_ well when I came stumbling out of the Chamber and one of the first things I heard was you telling Ginny to never trust anything that can think for itself if you can't see where it keeps its brain.”

“When I―?” Mr. Weasley furrowed his eyebrows, then his face slackened in realization. “Oh! Oh, yes, I remember. That was quite the eventful year for you, wasn’t it? Between me tackling Mr. Malfoy and the whole debacle under the school, you must’ve picked up on a few valuable lessons.”

Boy, wasn’t that the truth. “Yep,” Harry said, popping the ‘p’. “Lesson number one―do not piss off huge snakes if you have no magical bird with you. It will end poorly.”

Mr. Weasley made a bemused face at that, as if that wasn't quite the answer he'd been expecting, and seemed to shrug it off in favor of yawning. “Alright, we’ve hardly started. Don’t you want to know what happened to the man?”

Feeling significantly calmer than he had after the Tale of Three Brother, Harry leaned forwards to toe off his trainers, scooted his chair a little closer to the bed, and collapsed his upper body on top of the mattress once more, getting comfortable. “Go on.”

And so Mr. Weasley did. “It took the man a moment to gather his bearings, but as he gazed around, his weathered eyes recognized the home of his childhood. And, to his flabbergasted astonishment, his mother came ambling out of the front door. Under other circumstances, this would be normal, but here it was not―for this man’s mother had passed just months ago from the chill of a snowstorm she’d been trapped in. The man may have appreciated this more, if he did not, at once, fall to the ground into a deep, exhausted sleep. When the man next awoke, he much expected for the encounter to have been a dream, but to his amazement, he opened his eyes to, once again, see his mother’s lovely face. He reached up so as to cup her tender cheek, and in the sunlight, there it glittered―the ring from the clearing.”

At this point, Harry found himself filled with a strange, secondhand longing. He could only imagine the astounded relief the man felt at seeing his mother, as the closest thing he could liken such a feeling to was the disbelief of the moment he’d stumbled across the Mirror of the Erised. He averted his eyes from Mr. Weasley for a moment, and shut them to distract himself from the sudden sting within them. Then, he found them slightly difficult to open again.

“From there, the man spent two blissful seasons by his mother’s side once more. They tended to the garden, ate the sweetest of berries and most savory foods, and roamed the pebble-strewn beach he used to wander as a child together." It was around here that Harry stopped listening a bit, letting descriptions of the man's time with his mother fade into chatter in his ears. He tuned back in eventually when Arthur's tone changed. "Times changed, though. As winter came in with snow on its gelid breath, the man found a certain anxiousness rising within him, and when one night his mother did not return punctually, he found himself bounding into the bitter chill in search of her.” Mr. Weasley’s voice lowered suddenly, and after a moment, he continued, much slower and deliberate than before, but the words began to mix and meld in Harry’s ears anyway. “And search for her he did―for hours on end, he tore through the ice and snow, desperately looking for the barest hint of her auburn hair within the white, when finally, to his great relief, he pulled her from the depths of a snowed-in cave. There, he hurriedly carried her cold, shivering body home, and warmed her by the fire until the flush returned to her cheeks. He nursed her back to health for weeks on end and when she once again stood and embraced him, strong as ever before, he came to realize with a jolt that he’d saved her from her own untimely fate. Joy filled his chest in a rush, and he lifted her into the air to spin her, failing to notice the growing golden glow in the house."

 _'Oh,'_ Harry thought dimly. _'I don't think that's any good.'_

"No sooner had he gently placed her back down that the ring, which had laid beneath his knuckle for six months time and become a seemingly permanent part of his person, slid from his finger and clattered to the stonework.”

Harry could hardly hold his eyes open anymore, the cumulative exhaustion of the week finally catching up to him as Mr. Weasley worked to finish off the story. 

“The world shifted beneath the man’s feet for a second time, and to his horror, he felt the warmth of his mother leave him just in time for his feet to sink into snow. He gazed around, and found himself in the clearing once more, the ring gone from his finger.”

It was silent in the hospital ward, save for Mr. Weasley’s slightly raspy breaths, and Harry’s own quiet, level ones. Somewhere in the distance, Harry could make out the sound of baubles tinking against each other, swaying in the ambient magic of St. Mungos. 

“After a moment of incomprehension, the man crashed to his knees in the snow, and wept for what he had lost for the second time of his life. He pondered bitterly what would’ve happened had he held on for just seconds longer before sleep claimed him. He awoke days later in the home of one of his dearest friends, who wept with joy upon his return to consciousness. There, the man learned, to his amazement, that just days after he’d found the ring, a terrible flood had swept the lands near his own home and washed it away in the crashing sea, leaving the village in ruins and the denizens dead. This friend had assumed the death of the man, and was quite relieved to have found him safe and sound.”

Though he was now hovering near the brink of sleep, a jolt of cold comprehension crossed Harry’s dozing mind, the urgency of the thought hindered by the temptation of rest. 

“Now without a home or a mother, the man sunk into the depths of despair, wallowing in the pain of it all until he once again could find the strength to stand, and spent the rest of his days healthy and happy. Never once did the man think to return to the clearing, the devastation the thought brought him proving too much to bear. But had he been able to withstand it, the man would’ve found the ring once more, glistening on the third branch and lying benignly in wait for the next person to change fate.”

Mr. Weasley’s words closed off with a note of finality, and as Harry expected, he spoke no more. With great effort, Harry pried open his eyes a bit and looked up at Mr. Weasley, who was rubbing his face and twisting his shoulders to crack them.

“Mr. Weasley?” Harry murmured, intent on asking a question he already knew the answer to.

“Yes?”

Harry promptly forgot what he was going to say, the importance lost in a brief yawn, so he noted dully, "That w’s a weird story.”

Mr. Weasley leaned back into his pillows and smiled tiredly. “Oh yeah? Well, I _did_ hear it from a ghost, son. What did you think was weird?”

Harry tried to remember what he'd actually been planning on saying, recalled it rather suddenly, and then tried to puzzle out a way to articulate what he was trying to say

Slowly, haltingly, Harry spoke. “All magic...has a price. There’s, er...blood, energy, time...what was the price? Of the ring?"

Mr. Weasley humored him with a thoughtful hum. “You’re right―all magic _does_ have a price. Even the everyday magic; something is taken in exchange, and the deeper and darker it is, the more the magicks take. And a magic like the ring? Well, of course, there _must_ be some sacrifice. How curious. I'm afraid to say that I’m really not sure, Harry." Against his own will, Harry’s eyes slipped shut, and the bed moved a bit beneath him. "Any ideas?"

Harry thought of the answer, but he did not say it. "I'll figure it out..." He mumbled, and fell asleep before he could even bother trying to get the rest of the words out.

Arthur looked down at Harry pensively, who was ignorant of the gaze, and grabbed his long-forgotten wand from the bedside table. He spared Michael a glance, who had been woken by a Healer a bit ago that had quietly rubbed a salve on his wounds from his latest transformation, and got a nod back. Scratching the growing shadow on his face, Arthur glanced at the clock on the wall across the ward, and saw that it was nearing half-past one. Christmas had come over an hour ago. Dully hoping that the rest of his family would be there to join him and Harry in the morning, Arthur pulled back his own blankets, raised his wand, and levitated Harry into the bed with him, figuring it would be better for the poor kid’s neck in the long run. Harry didn’t move, and Arthur took a moment to admire the boy’s stillness in sleep, and then he himself hunkered down, ready to turn in for the night. 

“Happy Christmas, Harry.” He murmured, took great care to tuck Harry into the blanket properly, and then dimmed the light over his bed. 

Harry pressed into his side a bit, seeking his warmth, and after some careful maneuvering, Arthur managed to get an arm around him comfortably. He tugged Harry's glasses off his face, and took a second to remove his own as his hand passed from the rightmost side of the bed back to the night-table.

“So, when are you going to get around to insisting that he calls you Dad?”

Arthur sighed "I think we’re going to have to work up to ‘Arthur’ first.” He replied, and smiled wryly. “He’s very insistent on sticking to Mr. Weasley.”

There was a pause, and then, “...You’re a good father, Arthur." Michael murmured in a strange, wistful tone from the opposite bed.

“I hope so.” Arthur mumbled. "Good night, Michael."

"Good night." He heard back. 

He hoped Harry had a good dream.

* * *

_'Dive down deep into her sound, but not too far, or you'll be drowned.'_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Arthur: well that last story freaked Harry out  
> Arthur: ah i’ve got a great idea  
> Arthur: i’ll tell him this one story that a ghost told to absolutely no one that has inexplicably come to mind after a couple decades  
> Arthur: definitely not a lil suspect that it takes place in a place he’s got easy access to  
> Arthur: sure hope this doesn’t awaken anything in him.


	2. For Her

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Neville and Harry have one hell of a conversation rife with heavy topics. Real bro shit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Literally like two more chapters and we'll be in 1942 babes
> 
> Actual convo i had in the notes while my hella awesome and ever-incredible friend Aspen and I combed through the google doc to make sure i didn't fuck this up somewhere:
> 
> Aspen: i hate that seamus and dean have the same ea letters but the sounds are so different  
> Me: ...i pronounce those letters the same  
> Me: phonetically I've always read their names as "see muh sss" and "deen"  
> Apsen: seamus is pronounced shay mus  
> Me: you ARE FULL OF SHIT NO  
> Aspen: its shaymus im not full of shit i swear  
> Me, after googling it: **WHAT THE FUCK**

Tom Riddle sat up in his dormitory.

His bed curtains swayed in a warm, summer-y draft and he frowned, catching sight of the porthole that looked into the deep. The lake water rippled peacefully overhead, a contrast to Rosier’s loud, unsilenced snores, and though nothing appeared amiss and the sounds remained unchanged, he stayed stubbornly awake.

Somewhere, though he knew it not, a butterfly had turned left.

He frowned in a bemused sort of way, peering around the room in search of something keeping him up and found nothing, so he gingerly laid back down on his mattress, back aching the whole way down. He tilted his head to line up with the gap in his curtains, and gazed pensively out into the black water. A mermaid swam past, her stringy, pale mane trailing behind her shoulders and her tail running along the cool glass.

Oh yes, a butterfly had turned left, and he had no idea of this, but he knew one thing for sure: something had changed. He looked into the darkness of the lake water, and quietly hoped that it was for the better.

* * *

Harry had been praying that his yuletide break would continue on with no major catastrophes, but as seemed to be the case with most things in his life, this was not to be. He wasn't sure what he'd been expecting, but consciousness certainly did not come easily to him when his return to it was heralded by Mrs. Weasley cooing loudly and the amused faces of Ron's entire family and _then_ some, all while he was cocooned in the arms of Mr. Weasley like a child. It made for a pretty mortifying ordeal.

"Good morning, Harrykins." said Fred, a wicked sort of smile on his face that undoubtedly promised merciless ribbing in the future for this one. "Fancy seeing you here."

Harry, who could distinctly feel his own ears burning, quickly detached himself from Mr. Weasley and sat up, getting tangled in the sheets and pointedly not looking either the man himself or his wife in the eye. Oooh, he'd definitely overstepped here somewhere, though he wasn't quite sure of how he'd wound up in the bed. He glanced up and caught Ron smiling at him in the same way Fred was, and knew he was screwed.

"Good morning," He said stiffly, surreptitiously kicking his feet under the mattress in search of his trainers, which he'd kicked off at some point during Mr. Weasley's impromptu story-telling party. Escape was a necessity at this point, but he couldn't up and skedaddle without shoes. Harry had no clue what sort of things could be lying around on a magical hospital floor, and socked or not, he didn't want his feet to be privy to an inevitable discovery.

"Yeah, good morning to you too, kid. You eat a pepper imp or something?"

Harry jumped, and jerked to look at Cork. "You're awake." He said dumbly.

"Bit hard not to be when your whole family comes tromping in here at...good God, folks, it's only nine." Cork rubbed his eyes and sent Mr. Weasley a goofy half-smile. "Couldn't you lot have come here a couple hours from now? I'd have rather liked to be dead to the world until at _least_ noon."

"Ever the morning person, aren't you?" Mr. Weasley said dryly but not without humor, and Harry stiffened when Mr. Weasley clapped him on the shoulder. "Why don't you go freshen up, Harry? One of the healers moved your shoes to the foot of the bed, by the way."

Ah, he'd not been as sneaky in his search for them as he'd thought. Drat. Nodding quickly, he snatched them from the floor and jammed them on his feet, not even bothering with attempting to fix his socks. He could do that once he wasn't being cooed at from all angles, thank you very much. While everyone chattered amongst each other―Fred and George looked like they were eyeing the biohazard box on the wall, which Harry did _not_ want to be there for―he spared Cork a glance. He and Mr. Weasley were talking loudly and drawing the rest of their group into the conversation, which Harry found rather surprising. He'd been fairly stiff the previous night, but now that he was thinking of it, Cork _had_ loosened up a little once Mr. Weasley really got underway with all the stories. Perhaps the fairy tales had softened him a bit. He looked at the man consideringly, but shrunk when he and Cork made eye-contact. Cork didn't comment, though: he just widened his eyes a bit, and subtly cocked his head towards the door.

Harry, unsure of what Cork was indicating, just nodded to make the man look away and stood, avoiding bumping into Mrs. Weasley and edging around the veritable cloud of the remainder of the Weasleys plus Hermione, Remus, and Tonks. Ginny gave him a passing glance and he went rigid, but she seemed to dismiss him after a moment and he resisted the urge to sigh. And then―

"ARTHUR SEPTIMUS, YOU TRIED TO DO _WHAT?!"_

Mrs. Weasley's damning shriek froze Harry right in his tracks, less than a handful of meters away from the door. He made eye contact with Mr. Weasley over the woman's shoulder, and caught a flash of terror in them before Mr. Weasley, like Cork, nodded towards the door. Before he could make his escape, the room fell completely silent, and the visiting Weasley's all turned to look at him. Hermione had a strange, proud look about her and Ron looked like he was trying desperately hard not to laugh.

"Oh, hell," Cork said. "Arthur, I shouldn't have told her that, huh?"

Harry wondered wildly what on earth Cork could have told her that had her racing towards him with tears in her eyes, but he had no chance to back out before she was scooping him into her arms and clutching him to her breasts as if she were a particularly aggressive variant of Virgin Mary. "Oh, Harry! You clever, _clever_ boy! Thank you, thank you, _thank you!"_ And, to his mounting horror, she started peppering wet kisses all over his head. 

He could hear Fred and George losing their shit from all the way over here, and could've died on the spot. What the hell was going on? And then his question was answered as she turned her head and snapped, 

"Honestly, Arthur! _Muggle_ stitches!?" And ah, now this was making sense. "I can't BELIEVE you, going so far as to attempt to try―to try something so _primitive_ as that _, with all the venom still―!"_ Her volume amped up and up by the second until she began to devolve into a full-blown shout. _"You are SO VERY LUCKY Harry here was SMART enough to talk you out of it, and I―!"_ Oh boy. Harry tuned her out from there, wriggling out of her grip while she was distracted and nearly falling into the corridor. 

Before she could call him back in, Harry speed-walked away and went to look for a restroom if only so he could wash his face and hide for a minute. He was sure he'd be safe from there, but just as written before, as was the case with most things in his life, this was _also_ not to be, for he'd gotten no further than a couple staircases up before he ran smack-dab into Gilderoy Lockhart of all people. The bones in his right arm twitched, as if they were having Vietnam flashbacks. The less said about the conversation he had with the addled man, the better―the point was, because of Gilderoy Lockhart's harassment and Harry's utter inability to say no loud enough, Harry was now staring down the barrel of further mortification via the presence of Augusta and Neville Longbottom.

Lockhart was busy screwing around with something across the room, and as Augusta stared him down, Harry watched, helpless, as Lockhart seemed to forget about him entirely and instead fiddled with the fringed end of a blanket. Neville looked very much like he wanted to die on the spot, and Harry tried to be polite and excuse himself, backing out of the room as Augusta's stare seemed to harden. Oh, God. ' _How do I get myself into these situations?'_ Harry thought despairingly.

"Hullo, Harry," Neville called weakly, as if Harry trying to melt himself into the doorframe was not enough of a hint that he was trying to disappear.

"...Hi." Harry said meekly, gaze still locked with Augusta's. 

The silence stretched, and so focused was Harry on the cold face of Augusta Longbottom, that he hardly noticed the ambling shadow approaching him until she was already facing him down.

And that was how Harry met Alice Longbottom. 

"Oh, jeez," He murmured under his breath, barely making out a glimpse of Neville within her drawn face. 

He’d seen Alice in photographs before, and though he'd known on a logistical level that she'd no longer look like the person within them, not after what Bellatrix Lestrange had done to her, seeing it for himself awoke a new understanding inside of him. Barty Junior had been rather explicit in the memory trial, yes, but seeing the reality of her fate face-to-face made his heart drop like a stone in his chest just as much as it made it harden. He looked to Neville, and looked back to Alice, almost breathless.

She looked so different.

No longer was she that formidable, plump-faced woman he’d seen in his album. Her face was thin and worn now, giving the impression that her eyes, wide and misty, were overly large and protruding. There was a certain far-awayness to her, evident in her moon-like eyes. It sort of reminded him of Luna, actually, but further, if that made a lick of sense. Much, much further. She regarded him blankly, seeming to not see him at all, and then, defying his own thoughts, she tilted her head as if she’d seen him before but could not place him. Slowly, he removed his gaze from her, and looked again to Neville.

 _If I win this war,_ he thought to himself suddenly, but did not dare say, _I'll do it for her._

Augusta cleared her throat, and she looked between the two of them, her gaze rather shrewd. “So I suppose he’s not told you, then?"

Silence rang in the room, and Neville looked up at her, terrified.

"Have you no pride for your family, boy?" she snapped, her grip on his shoulder visibly tightening just as much as her voice did. Her gaze flickered to a drawn bed-curtain, and she said, "Everything your parents gave up for you, for everyone, and you don't even have the decency to tell their story?"

Harry looked between her and Alice’s slack, pale face, and then panned to Neville, who looked like he wanted to melt into the floor. Coming to a quick decision, Harry lied through his teeth and said, “No, no, please, I―Neville did tell me.”

There was a pause. “He did?”

“―I did?” Harry sent Neville a look that screamed _‘not helping!’_ hoping that he’d get the memo, and thankfully he did, because he fell quiet and then said, in false-remembrance, “Oh! Yes, Grandmother, I did.”

They were both looking at Harry now―Augusta looking for some clue of confirmation, and Neville screaming with his eyes for Harry to say something, so, figuring that he was already deep enough, Harry cleared his throat and said, “Just last year, it came up. He told me about how Bellatrix Lestrange―” Neville winced at the name “―used the Cruciatus Curse on them until....well…” Harry gestured helplessly to Alice, who was staring blankly at him with her head still tilted, as if she were deep in thought, and finished off with a pitiful, “Yeah.”

To perhaps both his _and_ Neville’s relief, Augusta looked appeased by this, and nodded primly. “Good.”

“Er.” Neville looked at Harry. Harry looked at Neville. He was pretty sure they both wanted to run and hide, but neither made a move to. Um. Exit strategy! “Walk...walk with me, Neville?” He spared a quick glance to Augusta. “If that’s alright….?”

“Yes, I had to talk with Frank and Alice’s healer anyway. Go on, then, Neville.” She said curtly, and turned to click away to a hovering attendant who―now that Harry was looking―was untangling Lockhart's fingers from the fringed end of the blanket that he'd decided was more interesting than Harry. Bastard.

Harry made eye-contact with Neville, and inclined his head towards the door with a wide-eyed grimace. As he did so, he suddenly understood what Cork and Mr. Weasley were trying to do with him earlier, and felt belatedly stupid. He pushed off the thought as Neville nodded jerkily and, gaze flitting to his grandmother once more, scurried over to Harry and followed him out the door. They fell into step together and walked down the hallway, and though it wasn't immediately obvious, Harry could feel the mutual discomfort amping up by the second. He didn’t start a conversation―he figured Neville would want to make the first move, since Harry had known about his parents and they both knew Neville hadn’t actually told him. Surely he wanted answers? This idea was quickly challenged, though, because Neville didn’t engage him in anything. Just as Harry was starting to worry that Neville was waiting for _him_ to say something, the boy in question looked at Harry nervously for the fourth time, and finally spoke, just as they passed a quick-moving healer,

“Why….?” Harry waited, and Neville set his jaw. “Why are you here?”

“I was just, er...I was just visiting Mr. Weasley. Ron’s dad.” Harry said lamely, not expecting this to be Neville’s first question.

“He’s still here then?” Neville flushed a moment later, seeming to notice that that hadn’t been the brightest question when he caught the look on Harry’s face, and quickly added, “I’m just surprised—I figured he’d be out by now. It was quite a while ago that you scared us all half to death with that dream of yours. Though that...wasn’t quite a dream, was it?”

Harry thought about how he'd barfed on the floor right in front of everyone and flushed a bit. “No.” He said stiffly.

Not quite a dream indeed.

"I won’t ask what it was about." Neville muttered, and squeezed his own arm with the opposite hand. "I don't know, I was just―I was surprised to see you here, I guess? Much less watch you get dragged into the room with Professor Lockhart hanging off your arm. Bit funny that he’s here, isn’t it? I can’t escape him―matches up with my luck, right?” Neville was rambling now, clearly skirting around the topic, and Harry sighed.

He wanted to crack a joke about his right arm bones and flashbacks but shoved it off―it didn't feel like a good time, so he cut to the chase and said, point blank and non confrontive, "“Listen... I've known about your parents for..." He chewed out the time in his head and settled with, "A pretty long time.”

Neville went rigid, and said nothing.

Harry sucked in a fortifying breath. “I never said anything because I didn't think you wanted me to know that sort of thing. It felt personal, and, er, it felt intrusive, you know? Since I learned about it without you being the one to share it." Harry glanced at Neville's stony face and cracked a small joke. "I, er...I guess I had an ounce of tact for once. Frightening, yeah?" Neville's face had not changed. Harry scratched the bad of his neck. "Right. So. I―I knew that there was no way you would want to talk about your parents if you hadn't already brought it up, so I figured I wasn't supposed to find out.”

"And said nothing." Neville said tonelessly. 

Harry shrunk. "...Yeah."

Silence reigned supreme for a couple more steps before Neville suddenly diverted and sat down heavily on a nearby bench, leaving Harry floundering in the middle of the hallway. Unsure of how to proceed, Harry looked around, and edged towards him. Then, Neville slapped his palm onto the space next to him―a clear invitation. Oh, boy. Harry slowly, gingerly sat down, and tried not to squirm.

Finally, Neville spoke. “No one was.” His voice was quiet, but sounded like distant thunder in the silent corridor. "Supposed to know, I mean." He clarified after a moment, then leaned back with his head tilted. The back of his cranium thocked gently onto the plaster wall, and Harry just about held his breath. “Gran says it’s selfish, but―”

Harry stopped him right there because, “No, I―you don’t need to explain―er―justify yourself to me or anything, I get it, and I’m not going to hold it against you or anything.” Harry felt like he had to make this exceptionally clear, and was rewarded when Neville’s shoulders relaxed. Neither spoke again for a moment before,

“How long?"

“What?”

“How long have you known?” Neville cocked his head to look at him, and said, "And don't say ‘a pretty long time’ again, Harry. I want the truth."

“Since...mid fourth-year.” Neville made a punched out sort of noise, and Harry quickly added. “Yeah I know, I know, I didn't say anything, and I probably should have, but like I said, you hadn't brought it up, so I figured you wouldn't want to…want to―talk about it, I mean.” 

“ _How?"_ Neville asked helplessly.

It took Harry a second to work out what he was asking. “It wasn't...it wasn't a targeted sort of thing, Neville. It's not like I sat down and thought, ‘Oh hey, I should find out what happened to Neville’s parents and invade his privacy,’ it just...sort of happened. A while before the Third Task of the tournament, I ran into Krum and we found Crouch before...y’know." Harry made a _kaput_ noise, and slid his finger across his neck. "Some things happened and I ran upstairs to go let Dumbledore know about Crouch. He, er, he left me alone in his office, and there was this weird...glowing thing.”

“A glowing thing?” Neville raised an eyebrow, and looked like he didn’t quite get what Harry was trying to convey, which was all well and good because even Harry knew that wasn’t a very specific description, even if he was planning on elaborating in a moment.

“It was weird, as if I couldn't look away.” He said quickly, continuing the story. “I got the strangest urge to look into it, so I did, and I saw the trial of Barty Crouch Jr. It was awful, really―he was pretty vocal about what happened to your parents and that's how I found out. I was a little shaken up by the end of it, Dumbledore pulled me out, explained that what I had been looking into was a Pensieve, which is a funny magical thingy that holds memories and―”

“―I know what a Pensieve is, Harry.” Neville said shortly. 

A little thrown off, Harry hunched a bit and finished quickly, “And, er, that was that. He told me not to confront you over it, I listened, and er...here we are.”

Neville didn’t say anything for a long time, but eventually, he said, “Thank you.”

Harry blinked. 

“What?”

“Thank you,” Neville repeated, looked at Harry’s confused face, and elaborated, “For being honest, and for...not spreading it around. It’s not...that I’m ashamed about them, or anything, no matter what Gran says, it’s just―” 

“―It’s upsetting to think about? And explain?”

“Yes, exactly.” Neville said quickly, and straightened back upright. He fiddled with the end of his sleeve for a while before he said, very slowly, “Harry, can I say something that sounds...sort of bad?”

Harry frowned, getting the niggling suspicion that he was about to be subjected to something whoa-worthy, but he owed Neville at least this much, so he said, haltingly, “Yeah...fire away, mate.”

Neville looked like if he could chew the words up and roll them around his mouth to taste them, he would’ve. “I don't talk about them not just because―yes, it hurts to think about them, but also because…IthinkthatIdon'tmissthem.” Neville got out in a rush, head sinking down towards his shoulders, and he looked at Harry worriedly. 

Oh shit.

Oh _fuck._

They were going to have _this_ kind of conversation.

Harry took a single look at the expectant fear on Neville's face, thought about his omission-lying about the bloke's parents, and decided promptly that, fuck it, he was a Gryffindor, and he was going to put on his big boy panties. It was time.

So, Harry tried not to let the panic show on his face, and instead prompted, “How do you mean?” 

Neville searched his face, and Harry held his breath, but Neville seemed to find what he was looking for and the discomfort in his figure seemed to evaporate. “It's not―it's not that I don't _love_ them or that I don't want them around, nothing like that, but I―I never knew them. I don't know who my mom is, or―or who my dad is―they never existed in my life.” Harry’s heart thudded to a halt in his chest. “Not for as far as I can remember, that is. When I look at them, I don't think of parents. All I see are just two shadows of the people who made me...if that makes any sense.” 

Ah.

Harry was not a fan of this.

Because the whole bit about whether or not it made sense, well...that was just the problem. It _did_ make sense, and Harry wished very dearly that it didn't. He didn't _want_ any part of that to make sense to him, because if it did, Harry knew damn well that the looming feeling of guilt would wash back over him, and he'd send himself spiraling.

“And I feel guilty―I feel _so_ guilty for it, because all these people tell me about how great they were, how much they loved me, and they all talk about how much they miss them, but I _don't_ feel the same. It's like everyone I know misses them, but all I get to miss is the idea of them. Do you know what I...?” Neville turned to look at Harry again, and something must’ve been showing on Harry’s face because Neville suddenly turned away and said, very fast, “No, no, nevermind, forget about this. This was a bad idea―I'm sorry, I shouldn't talk about this.”

And that was when Harry stopped and thought, which was a feat in and of itself. This was a chance. A chance of catharsis, of sharing a moment with someone who'd _understand_ because just from that spiel alone, Harry knew very suddenly that Neville would. So, he came to a quick decision, and said, “No.”

"No?" Neville echoed, looking at him anxiously.

“I know...exactly what you’re talking about.” Harry looked at Neville and felt as if he was seeing him for the first time. “And I push thoughts like that away. A lot. Because they make me feel guilty too."

Neville was looking at _him_ in much the same way now. “...They do?” He said hopefully, and seemed to realize his tone was a little inappropriate and went red. “Not―that’s not a _good_ thing, but―!”

“It’s good that someone gets it?”

Neville nodded, eyes wide. “Yeah, exactly that. It’s just like―everybody seems to have an opinion on how I _should_ be feeling about all of this, you know?" A flash of anger flitted across his face, and it was so very familiar because Harry had felt the same way more than once before. "I should be more proud, I should be more grateful, I should be sadder, I should be angrier, but no one―”

“―Actually bothers to ask about how we're actually feeling." Harry finished softly. "and when we say it, how we feel is somehow wrong."

Neville looked at him, carefully amazed. “...Right."

They looked at each other, sitting in silence for a moment while Harry processed the newfound kinship he was finding in Neville. He’d known about Neville’s parents and how similar they were in that regard, but never once had he considered that, perhaps, Neville felt similar to him too. That seemed so foolish now, because of course. _Of course_ he would. And then, voice no louder than a whisper, Neville asked him,

"We're _not_ wrong, are we?"

Harry huffed a laugh, a humorless sort of one, and shook his head. "Anyone else would say so, but I won't. No, we're not wrong, Neville."

Something like relief washed over Neville's entire body, and Harry watched as he slumped down on the bench. He seemed to abandon propriety then, and drew his knees up to his chest. After a moment, he muttered, 

"You'd think we'd be the authority since _we're_ the ones with no parents," And then, face scrunching, he said strongly, "And now I've just decided that we are. Anyone who tells us otherwise can suck an egg from now on."

Harry laughed, and scrubbed a hand across his face. "You get ‘em, Neville."

They sat in silence for a long while, letting the words hang calmly between them for awhile before, unexpectedly, Neville sighed and continued, “This whole thing sucks even more, because people always tell me about how great my parents were, but they don't tell me about _who_ they were. They always say the good things but the bad things never come up, and I know there _must_ be something, but no one ever tells me. So how do they all expect me to miss them if I don't know who they were? All I’ve got is this picture-esque, beautiful image of them. How am I supposed to miss that?"

And then, even quieter than before, Neville looked to the floor and said, 

"It’s not like what’s left of them tells me much...just gives me bubble gum wrappers.”

Harry felt his heart crack a bit. 

“People don’t even realize how lucky they are." Harry said after a beat, and put his hand on Neville's shoulder. "They all act like what they think you should be feeling is the truth, when they’ve actually got no idea what it’s like. Ron, Seamus, Dean...they can try, but they’ve no idea how incredible it is that they’ve got parents, and they’ll never know until they’re gone, and even then…”

“It won’t be the same.” Neville finished bleakly, saying the words Harry couldn't speak.

"I suppose we ought to be glad for that, though." Harry said grimly. "I don't want anyone to have to know what this feels like, even if it'd make certain things easier."

“Me too." Neville agreed, and then mumbled, "It’s not their fault that they don’t know, and I’m not blaming them for that, but sometimes I just can’t help that jealousy in me when I see those three goons getting letters from their parents, or―or just calling to them for help.” Neville spared him a glance, and said sheepishly. “I’m even jealous of you sometimes. Not only because you look like you’re handling this all so much better than me, but you’ve got the Weasley’s on your side, y’know? My family isn’t...very nurturing. Not like them.”

Cold shock rippled through him, but Harry wasn’t necessarily upset, knowing where Neville was coming from. “I’m...lucky. They’re very supportive and all that, and I’m grateful for them but I’m...not family. Mr and Mrs. Weasley aren’t my parents, I―I don’t belong. I’m a guest. A very loved guest, I suppose, but...I’m not family, Neville.” The admission made his heart clench with an old sort of pain, and Harry pushed it down quickly.

"Who's the first person you think of when I say ‘dad’?" Neville asked, voice flat, and Harry pointedly did not think about how quickly Mr. Weasley sprang to mind.

"Oh, but that's right," Neville smiled wryly a moment later, which made the indignation in Harry rise a little higher. “You came with them to visit Mr. Weasley because you’re such a good friend, huh? My mistake.”

"Neville," Harry said warningly, resolutely not thinking about how he'd been with Mr. Weasley for the entire previous night either, and relaxed when Neville held his hands up in surrender.

"I was just pointing out―" But whatever Neville was going to say was unceremoniously cut off when they both heard,

 _“―HEEEEEEY!”_ The distinct voice of a toddler.

It came screaming down the hallway, utterly derailing their conversation. “YOU’RE BEING TOO _LOUD!”_

"Wh― " said Neville.

There was the sound of tiny trainers slapping the tile, and a little boy appeared at the mouth of the end of the hallway, right in the middle of the intersection. His face was scrunched up and he was standing in a rather aggressive pose. He wasn’t facing them, though―he was looking down the adjacent corridor, where Harry caught sight of a skinny little girl, who made a series of annoying noises and took off.

“Riley Isabel Garrison, I swear to _God―!”_ A girl with a strong American accent came sliding next to the little boy, and she took his hand, hissing, “And _you!_ Stop the screaming, Graham, let’s _go.”_ Another girl came trotting over, and the first girl said sharply, “Divide and conquer, watch him while I go get that one.”

"Her is being _mean!"_ The supposed Graham insisted loudly, but he was ignored as he was passed off to the new girl while the first one went jogging down the corridor.

Graham, apparently, was not a fan of having his hand held, though, and ripped it away from his new handler. He started yelling, but the first girl turned mid-run, snapped her fingers with a threatening point, rage glowing in her eyes, and then turned again to keep running. The fluidity was rather impressive, Harry thought. There was a beat of silence before Graham started to kick up a fuss again. He exchanged an amused look with Neville.

“Sir, this is a Denny’s, I’m going to have to ask you to leave.” The other girl said in a ‘duh’ tone of voice, as if speaking to an unruly customer instead of her presumed brother, and ushered him off with a half-second glance at Neville and Harry. “C’mon, let's go back to Mom.”

Harry stared down the distant corridor, and watched the older girl seize Riley from the middle. Riley, predictably, began to kick and holler.

"Riley, we are in a _hospital!_ " The older girl whisper-yelled to no avail.

“Huh.” Said Neville, mouthing _‘Denny’s’_

Harry could hear the girl cursing from here, which was rather impressive given the distance between them. “Wow.” He breathed. 

Neville jerked with a sharp huff of a laugh, and shook his head. “Yeah. This is the greatest form of contraceptive I've ever seen.”

Harry burst into laughter, just as Riley bit her sister’s hand, who dropped her with a shout and then went to kick her before thinking better of it and lifting her back up into the air, this time, upside down. "Holy shit."

“I do sometimes wonder how the Weasley’s survived seven children.” Neville continued laughing quietly. “Suppose we both ought to be grateful.” He turned to look at one of the clocks on the wall, and frowned. “With that said, though, I really should get back to my grandmother. She’ll want to have a big family lunch, I expect.”

Harry was still busy laughing at Neville's comment, but got his shit together long enough to say, “Yeahah, get out of here. I’ll see you in school, then?"

Neville turned to face him, and after a moment, nodded. “Yeah. I’ll write, though.” The mirth in Harry finally died away as the corridor fell silent once more, and they looked at each other for a short while longer. Something seemed to pass between them before Neville said, quietly, “Thanks for listening.”

“Same to you, mate." Harry returned, and then proffered, "Happy Christmas?”

“Yeah, Happy Christmas.”

With that, Neville turned heel, and plodded back down towards the ward that housed what was left of his parents. Harry stayed on the bench for a little while longer, and came to a realization as he sat there alone, with only the ticking of a nearby clock to keep him company. 

He'd visited the graves of Neville's parents before his own.

Something sunk in his chest, and Harry thought of the Weasleys, all curled up around Mr. Weasley, and decided he'd very much prefer to be with them rather than alone in the dim, silent corridor. So, he stood, and moved to go back to them. His footsteps clicked on the tile as he walked, and he caught a glimpse of Alice Longbottom through the door window as he passed by the ward she lied in. He stopped, and looked into her luminous, empty eyes.

Nothing in her face changed.

* * *

_'It goes, all my troubles on a burning pile, all lit up and I start to smile, If I, catch fire then I change my aim, throw my troubles at the pearly gates.'_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Harry: I sure hope I have a normal day!  
> Molly: HARRY YOU CLEVER BOY—ARTHUR YOU STUPID SHIT  
> Arthur: Harry RUN  
> Lockhart: OH HEY WANT AN AUTOGRAPH  
> Augusta: hey look at my functionally dead daughter in law  
> Neville: HEY I DONT MISS MY PARENTS AND U DONT MISS URS EITHER  
> Random Americans: *screaming*  
> Alice: OuO  
> Harry:  
> Harry: what the fuck did I do to deserve this


	3. In All But Blood

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> New Years come and goes, and Harry gets suspiciously ill after his mental state deteriorates, leaving his basilisk-bit arm and horcrux-head in pain. there's probably a correlation there :)))
> 
> in OTHER WORDS, this is BLATANTLY SELF INDULGENT but ULTIMATELY SERVES AN OBVIOUS PURPOSE IF YOU CONNECT THE DOTS LATER.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> another convo with my friend as we edited this shit
> 
> Aspen: no apostrophe bc possessive  
> Aspen: you made it 3 whole words tho. im proud of you  
> Me: U SHUT UR WHORE MOUTH  
> Aspen: not until you learn how to USE APOSTROPHES

Yuletide break continued its ambling chug with little fanfare. Except for, of course, the whole bit of _“hey, the professor you literally hate more than anything is going to essentially violate your mind for two nights a week, cool? Cool”_ which Harry had been anything but pleased by. 

If he were a lesser teenager, he’d probably complain about it a hell of a lot more than he already was, but another visit to Mr. Weasley at St. Mungos had the man impressing the importance of him learning Occlumency upon him, so, he was just going to have to suck it up and deal with it.

Not that he was planning to be cooperative about it―because he 100% was not. Snape didn’t seem any more enthused about the future debacle than Harry was, so it was pretty clear that he wouldn’t be particularly nice about it. Harry would simply dish back out what he was given, nothing more and nothing less, since this wouldn’t be a legitimate class and he _technically_ wouldn’t get into detention if he told the guy to go fuck himself. And if Mr. Weasley frowned at him disapprovingly over this plan during yet another round of Go-Fish, which the man was terrible at, so be it.

Disapproving looks aside, Harry's visits to Mr. Weasley were some of the few blessedly-calm points of his life, and they were especially nice because―perhaps to everyone's surprise, including the bloke himself―Cork had made a habit of swinging down just to check up on how things were going with Mr. Weasley. He himself had gotten out just a couple days after Christmas, and had been acting shifty the last couple visits. Moody was worried the man was a mole, but as it turned out, Cork had some buddies in America who specialized in venom-removal (apparently it was a rampant issue in Arizona, which was evidently the home of many, many snakes, and wizards with too much bravado). So, to everyone's relief, Mr. Weasley was back on his feet and at Grimmauld Place the day before New Year’s Eve, just over a week before school resumed.

Harry was vaguely disappointed at the loss of the quiet peace of the hospital ward, but far more happy to have Mr. Weasley healed up and with a new friend to boot, so he couldn't complain. And neither could the mannequin that marked the visitor's entrance to St. Mungos, which Harry had developed an unhealthy vitriol towards over the course of his visits. He’d been contemplating exploding it, consequences be damned, and the horrid thing seemed almost relieved as he walked through the veil of St. Mungos with Mr. Weasley in tow, as if it could sense his animosity and was just as glad to be rid of him as he was to be rid of its ghastly sight.

Mark Harry's words though; one day, _someday,_ fiberglass and plastic guts _would_ be on his hands. 

Mr. Weasley was very amused by this prospect, and so was Neville, who―true to his word―was now exchanging letters with Harry and had been duly informed of how much Harry loathed that mannequin, and had confirmed his suspicion that some wizard had stolen the mannequin from muggles and repurposed it for the entrance of St. Mungos. Thus, Waldo Strongbark was next on his hit-list after he eventually took out the mannequin, assuming the guy was still alive (seeing as he’d been born sometime in the mid 20s). Neville had been sharing a lot of odd facts about the Wixen populace in general, actually, and not only did the whole thing keep Harry entertained, but also kept him relatively sane in the dreariness of the house. So, with the means to keep up good spirits, by New Year’s, not even the growing migraine thrumming behind his eyes nor the dull pulsing in his left arm could keep him down for long.

Mind, he wasn't exactly pleased that those things were happening, but as it stood, he was chipper enough to shrug it off for the most part.

He stayed on his feet and partied for most of the night that lead up to 1996, but by 11pm, he was sitting in one of the squashy, dusty couches and blearily watching the proceedings go along while he nursed a glass of cool water. He watched in vague amusement as Ginny tried to trip up one of the twins―George, if he could make him out from this distance―with her socked feet as she sat down and spun on the glossy hardwood in a circle. Hermione started yelling when George nearly mowed down Crookshanks in the process, and made a face when the cat made a running leap for Harry.

He caught the frenzied cat in his lap, wincing when he managed to shove his little cat paw straight onto the Basilisk scar on his left arm―which was hurting at the moment―and quickly corralled him into settling in his lap.

"Oh, hush." He murmured in an undertone, scritching the area just above Crookshank's tail as he stabbed his leg with his claws, skittering in place anxiously. "I've got you, mate. He can't get you from here."

"Guard him with your LIFE, Harry!" Hermione called from across the room, face all scrunched up, and Ron started laughing next to her.

"That was the plan!" Harry called back dryly, and settled deeper in the crusty couch cushion, using the hand that wasn't petting Crookshanks to scrub his face.

He winced when the movement tugged on the scar tissue on his left arm and sighed, shifting his socked feet on the carpet and wishing very suddenly that midnight would come sooner. He stopped petting Crookshanks, figuring the bowlegged cat wouldn't mind his laziness, but this was quickly disputed as Crookshanks began to purr in his lap, as if to implore him to continue. Harry huffed a little laugh, resuming the scritching, this time between Crookshanks' ears.

"Sorry for the disrespect, your highness..." He mumbled, shifting his thigh to tip Crookshanks more towards his stomach.

Perhaps if they weren't interrupted, Crookshanks would've shocked the hell out of Harry and revealed that he could talk like a human, but alas, this was not to be, for Harry tilted to the side a smidge as the couch cushion pressed downwards with the weight of Mr. Weasley, who more fell heavily than sat down. Harry looked him up and down to make sure he wasn’t dying, more amused than concerned, and cracked a smile. Evidently, the man had been playing Exploding Snap, for part of his eyebrow was gone and there was the barest hint of a grey smudge along the left side of his face.

"You alive over there?" He tried to joke, but it came out a bit more tired than he was intending as he fiddled with one of Crookshank's paws.

"Barely. Crookshanks, however, looks like he's having the time of his life." Mr. Weasley said, wiping one of the scorched lenses of his horn-rimmed glasses with his sleeve.

Harry glanced down at Crookshanks, who was now batting at his hand in annoyance, likely since he was not a fan of having his paw held. "You could say that, yeah."

"I wonder what Michael's up to for New Year’s. I'd have invited him over but, well..." Mr Weasley gesticulated to the general room, and Harry nodded in understanding. "He's not part of the Order. He's an honest bloke, though. I'll have to get a hold of Albus and ask about inducting him into this whole thing."

Harry quirked an eyebrow. "He's really nice and all, but that's a pretty drastic judgement. Are you sure?"

Mr. Weasley cast him a strange look, which Harry was rather confused by, but said nothing to explain it in favor of shrugging a shoulder. "He called in some acquaintances all the way in America to get me healed faster, and I did some prodding with him―he's no fan of You-know-who. Michael's a good man. I think so, and I've always been a good judge of character. And, hey," He nudged Harry gently, "If he joins, Remus can have an ally with the whole werewolf-pack thing-a-majig. It wears on him, and it'd be good for him to have someone watching his back, don't you think?"

Well, Harry couldn't argue with that logic, mostly because it was very sound. He supposed it'd be fun to have Cork in the Order too―it'd certainly make things less boring. They'd just have to wait and see, then. Harry went to yawn, but cut himself off in favor of saying―"Ow!" when Crookshanks suddenly bit his hand.

Harry looked down at the cat exasperatedly, and moved his hands away from him. "You could've just _told_ me you wanted me to stop. Jesus." He shook out his hand and, on a whim, tossed one the knit throw-blankets over Crookshanks to piss him off.

As Crookshanks struggled with the blanket in his lap, Harry and Mr. Weasley took to sitting in comfortable silence for a while. Mr. Weasley kept an eye on his kids and made comments every now and then to make Harry laugh, and Harry screwed around with Crookshanks intermittently as the clock ticked ever closer towards a New Year. By the time Sirius announced loudly that they had twenty minutes of 1995 left, Crookshanks was crouched in Harry's lap and had his claws stuck in his sweater. He was clearly not pleased by this because he was meowing very loudly and with a clear note of frustration. Harry sighed, and Mr. Weasley began to chuckle next to him.

"Well, _maybe_ if you didn't decide the puffy things would make a good chew toy, we wouldn't be in the predicament, Crookshanks." Harry said mildly as he tried to untangle Crookshank's claws from his sweater without any serious maiming on either of their parts, and sighed again when Crookshanks went to bite at his knuckles. "I don't know how you expect to get free if you gnaw off my hands.” He made a hissing ‘tsktsktsk’ noise and frowned. “Quit it, already."

"That's the same tone I used to use on the twins when they were little," Mr. Weasley said wistfully, and admittedly used the same tone as Harry as he waggled his finger in a mimicry of his own past self, "'Boys, I don't know what you think you're going to get out of prodding that chicken, stop it."

"And what happened with that chicken?" Harry asked as he finally freed Crookshanks, who hissed at him for all his trouble and frumpily began to knead on his trousers. "Ow."

"If I do recall correctly, I believe dear old Hollie nipped at Fred's finger until it bled and he came screaming inside about how she'd bit off his finger. All he really had was a little cut."

Ah, the sweet smell of blackmail material. Finally, ammunition against the guy's quips about Harry snuggling with the man he was next to at the moment. "Kids are really dramatic, huh." He said pointlessly, and then, remembering the Christmas visit to St. Mungos, he thought of the two kids that had marked the end of his and Neville's little rendezvous and asked, "Did I ever tell you about those two little kids who came screaming down the corridor on Christmas when I was hiding from Mrs. Weasley?"

Mr. Weasley's face melted into amusement, and he prodded, "No, you didn't. Tell me about them."

And so, Harry iterated the tale of "YOU'RE BEING TOO _LOUD!”,_ the cursing American girl holding the younger one upside-down, and some of the context thereof and by the time he was done, Mr. Weasley was flushed and wiping at his eyes, a broad grin on his face. "Oh, that reminds me of Bill and Charlie. They're both lovely boys and were great help when they could focus enough, but the twins really gave them a run for their money. I can recall a time Molly and I tried to take the boys out to the store to get out of the house while she was still pregnant with Ron, and by the end of it, Bill looked fit to cry, Molly _was_ crying, and George was diaperless next to the unicorn hair."

“Oh my god,” Harry looked at Mr. Weasley incredulously, laughing quietly. And then he remembered what Neville had marveled in the hallway when they'd seen those kids and thought to ask, “How did you two manage to survive that many little kids?"

Mr. Weasley shook his head and blinked hard. "The twins were by far the worst terrors of the lot, just before Ginny, and while I'd love to say that it was perseverance and skill that got me and Molly through that, you're old enough for me to tell you that it mostly involved a couple shots before bed, Harry."

Harry laughed so suddenly and so loudly that he got a couple looks, and Crookshanks shifted in his lap angrily.

Mr. Weasley was chuckling too, and he leaned back to let his balding head rest against the couch cushion with a loud, drawn out sigh. "Honestly, though, there were a couple big things that made it a lot easier to keep it together. The knowledge that they all had feelings just as big as mine, but condensed into a smaller body." He held up one finger. "That any pain they were experiencing was likely the _literal_ worst thing they'd ever felt in their entire life." He held up a second finger. "That they were allowed to have bad days and it wouldn't be fair if they didn't." He held up a third finger. "That it was my job as their parent and caretaker to love them, no matter how annoying they were, because I was one of the only things they knew and could turn to," A fourth finger went up. "And that at the end of the day, I loved them and wanted to see them happy, and yelling at them or hitting them in excess wouldn't make that happen." He held up a final finger, and then put his hand down.

Harry went still, having not expected advice, and especially not advice like that. He could hear Sirius and Ron having a play-argument somewhere across the room and any other time, he might've tuned in to see what they were going on about, but now...well.

Harry thought of his cupboard, and said nothing.

He swirled his fingers in a circle on his trousers, feeling vaguely shell-shocked as a special sort of misery began to well up inside of him, poisoning his high spirits and sending him spiraling back down to his own reality. He thought of Petunia’s soapy frying pan and looked askance, suddenly feeling a little sickened by it. He thought of the darkness beneath the stairs, the burning sun in summer, the gnawing hunger and bleeding thirst, and sunk lower and lower until he could feel his chin resting against the proverbial dirt. He barely registered it when the clock began to chime in 1996. _10, 9, 8, 7..._ Deep in his thoughts, just about none of them good, his arm pulsed harder and migraine came creeping back in. He found himself feeling rather nauseous. _6, 5, 4..._ He prayed that the room wouldn't get any louder, but as they got down to 3, the volume increased in excitement, and then there was 2, and then 1, and then Mr. Weasley was clapping him on the left shoulder and telling him Happy New Year, and missing his gasp of pain in the roar of the room as finally, finally, 1996 came.

"Happy New Year’s," He mumbled, blinking the spots out of his eyes as he cradled his left arm, and ignored how it ached.

* * *

Arthur had been hoping to stay conked out until at least nine after he'd gone to bed at midnight, but he found that this was not to be when he found himself inexplicably awake at 6:14 in the morning. He briefly wondered what the hell had woken him, but when he heard a rather loud, muffled meow outside of his and Molly's bedroom door, he suddenly understood. Annoyance flickered through him―goddamn that cat―but brushed it off quickly. Crookshanks was kind of stupid sometimes, but Arthur couldn't deny the cat had eerily shining moments of intellect, and thus knew that there had to be some sort of important reason as to why he'd foregone bothering his owner or Harry and gone for him or Molly instead. Of course, 'important' was an arbitrary thing for a cat, so Arthur, pulling himself out of bed, prepared himself for the possibility of having been woken because Kreacher was skulking around somewhere Crookshanks didn't think he ought to be or something equally inane. 

He jammed his slippers on his feet and trudged towards the door, letting it creak open quietly so as not to wake his wife and looked down in disdain as Crookshanks wound around his feet in a figure eight once, before bounding down the hallway and looking back at him halfway down and meowing loudly.

Arthur blinked, rubbed the crust out of his eyes, and sucked in a long breath for the sole purpose of sighing it out. "You really want me to follow you? At this hour? In this chill?" He asked pointlessly, leaving the bedroom anyway as he spoke.

As if answering his question, Crookshanks meowed, and then skidded down the hallway a bit further as Arthur got closer.

"If this is about Kreacher again, I'm tossing you at Hermione." He muttered under his breath, dragging his feet on the murky hardwood and huffing.

Arthur wanted to be grumpy, but as he followed Crookshanks, he began to notice a strange sort of anxiety about the cat, as though he were worried about something, and wondered what on earth could have him on the fritz like this. He didn't know what he was expecting to find―perhaps something like a particularly frightening-looking picture frame, a shiny cup, or a piece of ominous paper.

He certainly wasn't anticipating finding Harry curled up on the living room floor.

Oh, fuck.

All traces of annoyance instantaneously vanishing, Arthur hurried down to the living room floor and hovered over Harry, looking at Crookshanks incredulously as he batted at Harry's shoulder and meowed.

"You―" He sputtered, and shook Harry's shoulder to try and wake him. "―Oh, you clever cat."

Harry made a punched-out, painful noise when Arthur shook him particularly hard, and he let go of the boy like he was burning. And then, he placed his hand back down, because Morgana and Circe, he _was_ burning.

He tugged Harry towards him until he was laying on his back, and pushed the hair out of his face, patting his cheek gently. "Hey, c'mon kid." He whispered quickly. "C'mon, now, talk to me."

To his great relief and equal concern, Harry's eyes cracked open and he looked blearily up at him, and then around the room, as if he wasn't sure where he was. 

"Are you with me, son?"

Harry's eyebrows scrunched and his lips moved, but no sound came out. He looked vaguely frustrated by this, and tried to sit up, and Arthur jerked to help him. Harry's own effort was disconcertingly unhelpful in the process of Arthur tugging him up, and by the end of it he’d all but bodily lifted Harry onto one of the nearby couches. He murmured reassurances under his breath as Harry fussed a little, still blinking dazedly, and wondered wildly what on earth was wrong other than the fever. In a moment of stupidity, he looked to Crookshanks as if he could tell him.

He thought for a split second that Crookshanks had actually obeyed his wishes and spoken because a hoity-toity voice filled the room then. "That cat is much smarter than he looks." But then, who exactly was speaking clicked, and Arthur went rigid. 

‘ _N_ _o way,’_ he thought, but apparently there _was_ a way, because as he looked back, he found himself looking up at the portrait of Walburga Black.

She looked him up and down as if he were the dirt on her non-visible boot, but he decided not to worry about it until later in favor of figuring out why the hell one of his kids was sprawled out on the living room floor at 6 in the morning. And it seemed Walburga, of all people, was inclined to tell him, because in a perfectly even, posh tone of voice, she said,

"He's been on my floor for over an hour now, and his magic started to get annoying. Filthy little half-blood that he is, I'm still not partial to corpses in my house, so I sent that creature to go get help. I had assumed he'd run to get my waste of a son, but it seems he grabbed you instead. Strange."

Arthur puffed up at the blatant insults Walburga was spilling, but again shoved off the anger to instead take care of the kid who looked fit to fall off the couch. "What's wrong with him? Is he hurt?"

Walburga looked at him disdainfully. "I'm a portrait, fool." At the look he sent her, though, her face twisted and in a very put-upon tone, she said, "He was clutching his arm earlier. The left one. And didn't look like he could see straight. He looked nauseous, too. Now get him out of my sight."

Arthur didn't need any more of a cue than that, because frankly, he didn't think Harry needed to be exposed to Walburga's poison this early in the morning anyway. He noticed the curtain to her portrait slowly slide shut of its own accord, and grudgingly thanked her for that in his head before refocusing on his kid. He patted Harry's face once more in an effort to get him aware enough to move. Harry, whose head had bonelessly lolled onto the back cushion, was unhelpful to the point of hilarity in this effort.

"Harry," Arthur whispered insistently. "Good Merlin, son, stay with me. Help me get you into a bed, at least."

Harry did not seem to find this an agreeable task and stayed stubbornly inert, only cracking his eyes open momentarily to give him a sleepy, baleful look and slump further into the couch, breathing raggedly.

Despite himself, Arthur nearly laughed and shook his head. "Am I going to need to take you to St. Mungos? Tell 'em that you're dying?"

This got a response out of Harry, albeit a disturbingly lackluster one: "W'n't they be pleased..."

"I will carry you," Arthur threatened weakly, trying to scrounge up something that could possibly make Harry get it together enough for Arthur to not feel the need to _actually_ rush him to St. Mungos. "Parade you across the house in my arms, like a damsel. No one will ever let you hear the end of it." Not that anyone was actually awake to see it, though Harry didn’t need to know that.

"Mffph." Was the only reply he got, and his stomach sunk unpleasantly. That was it.

"Alright, you asked for it," Arthur said hesitantly, and hooked his hands under Harry's armpits to tug him upright and into a shoulder hold, as if he were a three year old instead of a grown―but frighteningly small―teenage boy. But, just as Harry's arms raised enough to get out of the way, his eyes shot open and he gasped.

Arthur hoped for a fleeting second that it was just awareness flooding back to him, but to his horror, Harry's eyes grew wet and he heaved, looking more and more distressed by the second. Arthur let him go in a flash and stepped back, looking for the damage and finding nothing. Harry curled into a ball on the couch and breathed out sharply, over and over again, face flushed bright red. He had his left arm cradled to himself, clutching the forearm in a death grip, and Arthur could have hit himself. Walburga had _told_ him that Harry's arm hurt, but like the jackass he apparently was, he'd assumed it was just a minor pain and the real problem was the fever. Evidently not.

Guilt clogged his throat as he crouched down next to Harry, rubbing one of his shoulder-blades soothingly while he shook with honest-to-goodness pain. After a minute or two, he sat down beside Harry on the couch, took him by the shoulders―this time treating his left arm _very_ carefully―and sat him up to tilt him into his lap. The couch was not a good place to succumb to agony, and clearly Harry was indisposed to getting up and into a bed himself, so as it turned out, he _would_ be parading the boy across the house like a damsel.

Harry went up and into his arms with very little fuss, which was perhaps the worst part of it, because that said a whole lot more than words could about his condition. Harry never seemed like he quite knew what to do about hugs or being held, and was prone to dancing away from them or struggling when he was caught. He had an extraordinary knack for freeing himself, too, so his inaction clued Arthur in to more than words ever could. He peered at Walburga’s portrait as he passed but she did not appear again, so he avoided the clutter in the room and plodded down the hallway as gently as he could, trying hard not to jostle Harry too much or wake the other denizens of the house. He momentarily thought of putting Harry down in the room he shared with Ron, but cast the idea aside quickly―Ron, bless his heart, was very loud, and he loved Harry a _lot._ If Arthur woke him by carrying Harry into the room, the whole debacle could only lead to shouted concerns and incredibly violent mothering on Ron's part, which didn't seem like something Harry would appreciate at the moment.

Crookshanks crept behind him as he walked, and he thanked his past self and the cat as Crookshanks used his flat face to prod open the bedroom door he'd left open in his begrudging haste to follow him just minutes ago. Molly stirred in the bed as he started to put Harry down, and rolled over to peer at him.

"Arthur?" She murmured, rubbing her eyes and yawning wide enough to show off her pretty, white teeth. "What's...?" She caught sight of Harry then, and went stiff. "Oh, dear."

He smiled at her wryly, watching in adoration as she immediately put on her mom-pants and started fussing. Harry's face scrunched up and he curled into the warmth of the bed, shying away from her hands as she felt his forehead, and he glowered at the wall. "Easy on him, Molly." He said, and she looked at him, hazel eyes wide and shining.

Merlin, he loved her.

He nodded twice, and squeezed Harry's knee. "I brought him in here so the kids wouldn't harass him later―it's still early, so they won't be up for awhile, but better safe than sorry." At the questioning look she gave him, he explained. "I didn't kidnap him from his room or anything―Crookshanks came in to grab me just a couple minutes ago, because he was sprawled out on the living room floor."

She looked very, very alarmed by this, but her face softened when Harry let out an exasperated sort of sigh. "Oh, and I suppose you fought him every step of the way here, then." She instead joked with him gently, rubbing a small circle on his back as he seemed to melt straight into the mattress.

He hadn't, though, which was exactly what had Arthur so concerned. "Keep an eye on him while I run down to the kitchen to get him a potion or two," He said, edging towards the door. "I won't be longer than a minute."

And it didn't―it was hardly any effort to scurry downstairs, grab a pain-relieving potion, and hurry back up to Harry and his wife. He barely noticed his surroundings as he went up and nearly bowled over Crookshanks as he went along, who was skulking outside of his bedroom. He shooed the cat inside as he went in, gesturing to the bed.

"Go on, keep him company." He said, and prodded Harry over so he could drink the potion without choking on it.

Harry made a face at the potion but looked delighted to have Crookshanks with him, and took to petting his ears as Arthur measured out a bit of the potion and held it out to him. He gave it an angry look as he grabbed the spoonful with a shaking hand―Arthur nearly put his own out to prevent it from spilling, but Harry seemed to have it―and caught a look from Molly as Harry swallowed the thick-ish liquid down.

It took him a moment to work out why she was concerned, but when he did, he pointed at his own left arm when Harry wasn't looking and mouthed, 'hurt a lot'. She took his word for it and redirected her concern to Harry when he began to look visibly drowsy. Frowning, Arthur read the label of the potion he'd snagged, and realized it had a sedating effect to it. Ah, well, that was fine, Harry could use the sleep anyway.

It seemed, though, that as was a running theme with him, Harry wasn't about to go down for the count without a fight, which pleased Arthur greatly because that meant the pain-relieving potion was doing what it was supposed to―and quickly to boot. He crawled into the bed with him and Molly, and tugged Harry back into it by the back of his t-shirt when he tried to get up.

"Not so fast there, kiddo." He said gently, trying to make Harry roll over. "You're not getting away that easily, not after I had to literally carry you here."

Molly made an alarmed noise at that, and Harry hunched his shoulders, looking embarrassed. "How'd you ev'n know I was on the floor?" He pouted, giving up on his struggle to leave the bed in favor of yawning.

Considering for a moment, Arthur crawled back out of the bed, pushed Harry towards the middle―not without mumbled, slurring protests―and took up the end of the bed Harry had been laying in before, leaving the boy sandwiched between him and his wife, sideways and facing her. There, no escape now.

Only then did he explain, very quietly. "Just as I told Molly―Crookshanks came to pester me."

There was a pause, and then there came a small, "'m sorry."

Arthur exchanged a sad look with Molly, and put his hand on Harry's shoulder. "Nonsense, don't be. I'm glad he did."

"But you w're sleepin’." Harry's voice dragged as he began to lose his fight against his own sleep―and wasn't that such a display of willpower, trying to struggle against a literal sedative?

"Yes, Harry, he _was_ sleeping, but he was sleeping in a warm, comfortable bed, not shivering on the hardwood." Molly told him quietly, brushing his hair behind his ear. "I'd much rather have us both be awake a tad too early than have you suffering on the ground."

"I was fine..." Harry insisted, not sounding very convincing at all. "Crookshanks was good c'mpany, too."

"That doesn't change that you were passed out on the living room floor for a couple hours."

Harry tilted his head to peer back at Arthur, looking unsure of where he'd gotten this information from. Evidently, he'd not heard Walburga say her piece, which was probably for the best.

"I wasn't passed out for hours, I was awake _sometimes.”_ He said petulantly after a moment, and Arthur's heart sank in his chest at the very thought. He locked eyes with Molly, and knew she was wondering the same thing as him―for just how long had Harry been alone, in pain, and aware of it?

"That...is so much worse, son." Arthur said softly after a moment, sidling closer to wrap an arm around Harry as if to shield him from further hurt.

Molly shifted closer to do the same, and he looked at her sadly as Harry seemed to shrink between them.

"...'m sorry." Harry said once more, and before Arthur could explain to him that no, he shouldn't be sorry, not for this, he went lax and breathed out, sleep finally overcoming him an admirable three-ish minutes after he'd been inadvertently sedated.

He and Molly looked at each other for a minute, neither speaking, before he heaved a sigh and squeezed Harry a little tighter and muttered, "Oh, what are we going to do with this one?"

“...Hold him?” Molly said after a quiet moment, gazing down at him with watery, mournful eyes. 

Well, that sounded like a start.

Arthur hunkered down a bit further, and settled in for a long couple hours, hoping against hope that he and Molly might just be able to hug all the pain out of their youngest son.

* * *

_'When inner scars show on your face, and darkness hides your sense of place, well I won't speak, I will refrain, and be the song, just be the song'_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Harry: you know that mannequin--the one that marks the entrance to this place?  
> Arthur: yeah? what about it, son  
> Harry: one of these days. i'm going to take it by its fabric-covered plastic neck and just. do terrible, terrible things to it.  
> Arthur, wildly misinterpreting this: wh. what's the inspo for that  
> Harry: thats a very personal question. one that i dont know the answer to  
> Harry: but seriously, fuck that thing. i long for the day that i see it dead by my hand.  
> Arthur: OH. OHAHAH, OKAY, COOL. You do that, kid.


	4. Broken is Your Birthright

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Arthur gets a Suspicion which sets the stage for future events, something's so whack about Harry's arm that Unspeakables have gotten involved, Snape sees something he shouldn't, and things are about to get Very bad.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another convo w/ me and my kickass friend who i love very much
> 
> Me: the hp server im in rioted over the toddler line the other day and Pan keeps bringin it up to laugh all over again  
> Me: its like the monsterfucking thing all over again  
> Aspen: im sorry the _what_  
>  Me: uh  
> Me: basically i started a shitstorm about Tom Riddle foregoing becoming a dark lord in favor of fucking monsters like a month ago and i've yet to live it down  
> Aspen: does. does this make harry a monster  
> Me: yeah  
> Aspen: aight cool

A couple hours later and intermittent dozing saw their positions change a bit. 

Molly pursed her rosy lips at Arthur as he held onto Harry, who seemed to have picked his favorite parent and was now sprawled across his chest. "Not my fault that you're not hip enough for him," He joked, and poorly hid a grin when she swatted at him.

She huffed, but didn’t rise to the bait, instead asking softly, “He’s not too heavy for you, is he?” 

Truthfully, no, Harry wasn’t heavy at all. “It’s like having a particularly long toddler on top of me.” He said with a shrug, trying to make her laugh with a stupid description, and was hence rewarded with an amused little grin as Harry appeared to make a mission out of trying to physically merge with Arthur’s body in his sleep. “He’s small, Mollywobbles. Like one of those teacup dogs the muggles go nuts over.”

"I wouldn't exaggerate that much. I've not seen a teacup dog nearly as big as 155cm."

Arthur suppressed a mortified laugh, careful not to move too much so as to not wake Harry up. "Oh, Morgana, he's not really five centimeters shorter than Ginny?"

“Believe me when I say he is, dear. Hermione started an argument about everyone's heights a couple days ago and I got to measure the lot of them."

"He's _fifteen.”_

"And he's 155 centimeters tall."

Whatever else she was planning on adding, it was cut off by a raspy, quiet, and undoubtedly disgruntled, "He's also got functioning ears, in case you didn't know."

Oops. Arthur laughed a little, feeling vaguely apologetic, and curled his hand up to cup the side of Harry’s head, stroking away the hair and surreptitiously feeling his forehead in the process. He felt a stab of concern through his own mirth at the heat he could still feel, and lowered his voice into something a bit more gentle when he asked, "How are you feeling?"

“Oh, yeah, just don’t acknowledge you’re giving me grief about my height, that’s fine.” Harry heaved an exasperated sigh, and as he shifted, he winced hard enough to make Arthur twitch. There was a pause, and Harry tacked on sheepishly, “Arm just hurts, 's all,”

Arthur knew right then and there that something was very, very wrong―Harry was exceptionally lock-lipped about pain responses, to the extent that he―to his and Molly's horror―had once hidden a broken ankle for several days. That in and of itself had been no small feat, and when other pain was viewed under the lense of that context, Harry openly _admitting_ that something hurt was. _..worrying._ Arthur exchanged an alarmed look with his wife, whose eyes reflected the same sentiment, and there was a brief moment of stillness before Harry started pulling away. His elbow jabbed Arthur in the lung for the barest portion of a second before Arthur wheezed reflexively. Harry pulled it up as if he’d been burned. He looked, bless him, really concerned at the response to the unwitting and unplanned respiratory attack, but that wasn’t what Arthur was concerned about.

Yes, Harry’s care was very endearing, but what was _not_ endearing was how Harry looked. He'd looked awful earlier, but the flush in his face had now drained away into a frightening bone white, and the bags cradled under his eyes looked suddenly pronounced. It appeared as if a particularly stiff breeze would bowl the poor boy over like a skipping stone, and the moment Harry managed to struggle his way out of the bed and was standing on shaking legs, Arthur immediately tried to tug him back. He'd already said he was in pain, and he looked like he was too. He _needed_ to stay down, if only to soothe Arthur's heart. 

“Hey,” he soothed, trying to corral him back into sitting down. “Come sit, you look like you’re about to fall.” 

No such luck; Harry put his incredible talent of wriggling out of anyone’s grasp to not-so-good use, and proved he was still adept at the practice even when he looked like he was about to pass out. He was remarkably quick about his escape too; by the time Arthur or Molly were even standing, Harry was already halfway to the bathroom. He thought that Harry was under the impression that that was the way out of the room, but that was quickly disproven by the door slamming shut, a clink, a beat of silence, and then a retch. Mentally, Arthur added "nausea" to the symptoms list (which currently had fatigue, fever, and pain) and looked over at his wife, waiting for her input before he got up.

“Oh...” She fretted, wringing her hands and “I’ll—“ she made a start for the bathroom, stopped short, and after a handful of seconds, she instead went for the actual bedroom door.

“Molly?” Arthur called questioningly, shifting towards the bathroom. 

“You got the last potion, er, I'll...yes, I'll get the next round, something to drink maybe.” She stammered, and was already halfway out of the door as she threw over her shoulder, “Go Arthur, make sure he’s—“

And she was off. There was a tense moment where Arthur wondered what on earth had her in such a tizzy, and then he realized Harry'd never _really_ been sick-sick with them before. Broken ankles were one thing―sickness was a whole new field. Just as she had done with the rest of their kids, she was acting like a loon the very first time they fell ill. Shaking his head, Arthur made for the bathroom, and then Sirius poked his head in.

“Molly looked fit to start popping out chickens,” He said haltingly, wincing halfway through his sentence when Harry gagged in the bathroom. “Oh, is that...?"

Arthur shook his head, and padded towards the master bathroom as Harry quieted a little more. “Yes, that's Harry. Did you need something?"

Sirius made a face at the bathroom door. "I was just about to ask if you'd seen him anywhere, but it looks as if I've had that answered. What's wrong with him?"

"Your mother told me about how he was on the floor for a couple hours earlier before she sent Crookshanks to go find help once she got annoyed with his presence. His arm is bothering him for a reason I've yet to figure out, he's running a fever, and now, apparently, he's nauseous." He explained tightly, and peered over at Crookshanks himself, who was basking in the morning light by the window. "Molly’s getting medicine; why don’t you hunt down some new nightclothes and his toiletries? I’ll get this.”

Sirius looked mystified. "My mother...?" Harry retched again, though, this time noticeably louder and Sirius just nodded, peering at the bathroom with a look of vague disgust. “Yeah, right then. All you, mate,” And then left, hopefully to go do what Arthur had prompted.

Arthur rolled his eyes and cracked open the bathroom door, catching a glimpse of Harry hunched over the toilet and looking like the epitome of misery. He kept his distance for a while, knowing how embarrassing it was for someone to hover over you when you were vomiting and knowing Harry would probably appreciate the solitude for a bit. It took a couple minutes, but soon it appeared as if the worst of it had passed, and Arthur crept closer.

“All done?” He called softly. 

As if his body had been waiting for someone to ask something like that, Harry retched again.

“That’s a no, I take it.”

Harry paused just long enough to throw a baleful look over his shoulder and Arthur decided to forego leaving Harry alone in favor of providing some comfort instead, if only because the retching was starting to sound really painful. He prodded the door closed with his toe and padded further into the bathroom, coming to a stop next to Harry and crouching to place a hand on the boy’s back. Harry sighed shakily, and after a little while, dry-heaved once more. Right, Arthur supposed those handful of calm minutes had just been the eye of the storm, then. 

Well, he’d feel like a cock if he backed off now, so Arthur settled in to just rub a soothing circle into Harry’s back and wait for it all to pass, ignoring the acidic stench of stomach bile all the while. It wasn’t Harry’s fault he was ill anyway, and he was being a trooper about it―now that he was thinking about it, Arthur was sure that Bill or George would be in tears by now. Harry was being disturbingly quiet about this too—he was so used to Charlie or the twins waking up the entire house with how loud they were about this, but truthfully, the only reason he’d known so quickly that Harry was sicking up in the bathroom was because sound carried so easily in there. Arthur smiled inappropriately, remembering how Molly had learned that the hard way and tried not to laugh. _You’re a grown ass man, stop laughing at farts._

Some time passed before Molly finally came bustling back in with some medicine, toast, and water, and between Harry’s barfing extravaganza finally tapering off, shoehorning him into a chair, and getting him to eat and drink, no one paid much mind to when Sirius came tromping back in to deposit clothes and toiletries until he encouragingly clapped Harry on the back. Arthur was aware that Harry had to be in some sort of discomfort—he’d been wincing since he'd woken up, but it still came as an awful surprise when Harry cried out in pain.

Arthur knew right then and there that something was _wrong―_ not only had Harry admitted that he hurt, but he made a _noise._ Alarm bells now ringing in earnest, Arthur immediately batted Sirius away, who had the decency to at least look apologetic, and took the water glass from Harry's hand before he could drop it. Harry hunched forward and breathed raggedly just like he had hours ago―Arthur crouched, cursed his old man body for the umpteenth time, and cupped Harry’s chin to make the boy look at him, trying to keep his hand from shaking. 

“Where does it hurt, son?” He asked urgently, keeping his tone as non-confrontive as possible in hopes that Harry would actually tell him. 

It'd been his left arm earlier, but now it seemed the pain had spread, which did not bode well at all. If Harry had been planning on explaining, though, Arthur would never know, because through the doorway came a halting, "Harry?"

Arthur's heart stopped. 

Harry went rigid under his hand and, after a moment, he squinted at the door, where Ron stood.

Ron crept into the room, eyes flitting between the three adults crowding his best friend, and narrowed them. "Right, what's all this, then?"

Harry looked away, eerily still, and Ron looked down at him, prodding Sirius out of the way. Harry cringed ever so slightly as Ron’s stare lingered, and then Ron said, dangerously calm, “You _told_ me it didn't hurt that badly."

"...Well, Ron." He said after a moment, not looking up. "Now I’m telling you that _I_ am a liar. And also a scoundrel. Can't forget that part."

Sirius snorted a laugh but Ron didn't so much as crack a smirk, and neither did Arthur, who had picked up on the strain in Harry's voice. Arthur looked at his slightly-elder son, waiting sighed angrily, and put his hands on his hips. _'He looks so much like Molly,'_ came an errant thought. 

"I'm telling them."

Molly's hand tightened on his shoulder. _'Tell us what?'_

Harry let his head fall backwards onto the armchair. "Do _not_." He implored weakly, but it was a wasted effort as Ron immediately snapped, 

"No, I've made up my mind, and I’ve decided I’ve had enough of your shit. This has gone on long enough. You ought to feel lucky I'm not dragging you to the hospital by your ears.” Then, he looked Arthur dead in the eye, and with resolute anger shining in his own, he said point-blank, "Harry's arm has been hurting like that since the end of second year."

Silence flooded the room in the wake of Ron’s words, sitting like a heavy pressure between them all. 

Something in Arthur's head misfired.

He stared at his son uncomprehendingly for a moment, breath knocked clear out of his chest. 

Shoulders stiff, he slowly looked up at Harry, who was glaring at Ron like he wanted to kick him, and he thought of Harry, tiny _, twelve-year-old Harry_ on the ground and unresponsive with pain. And then he thought of that same kid dealing with that sort of pain for three years―three _goddamn years―_ and never saying a word about it, and had to physically fight down the trembling in his hands. 

_'Where were the adults for that?'_ Arthur thought, almost desperate, and twitched when he thought muggles Harry lived with. He thought almost immediately of how they'd _sneered_ at him when he implored them to so much as say goodbye to Harry back when the boy was still fourteen, and things started to come together very poorly around then. Arthur won't divulge to you the details thereof, because they weren't important then; Harry was. Suffice to say, this was the last straw for Arthur. Because surely, _surely_ Harry would’ve told his caregivers about this if they had _cared,_ right? Or _―_ Or they would’ve noticed him _on the floor_ in the weeks he’d stayed home, right? Arthur made a mental note right then and there to.. _.check up_ on just _who_ these muggles were. Then, he swallowed very thickly, sent the cold anger rising in his throat down into his stomach, and with a carefully blank face, he nudged Harry's knee and asked, very calmly,

"Is this true?"

Harry searched his face, but after a moment he admitted meekly, "Yes, but it hasn't been... _that_ bad for the whole time. Not like I was laying on the floor all this time, that's new."

The fact that it hadn't been the same level of pain he'd seen in Harry just hours ago soothed Arthur _greatly_ , but at the same time, not very much in the grand scheme of things.

Evidently, Ron wasn't pleased by this description, because he added gruffly, "But this isn't the first time you've been on the floor, Harry. That part is _not_ new. Where were you this time?"

"On the living room floor." Harry said quietly, and then looked at the ground and nudged Crookshanks with his heel. "I had Crookshanks with me, though, I was fine."

Ron made an aggravated noise and threw his hands up. "Crookshanks is a _cat_ , Harry. He's a _cat_ . What’s he going to do if you just up and die, huh? Purr on you? You've been downed by this since _November!”_ Harry didn't say anything in the pause that came. "Look at me, dammit! And don't tell me this _didn’t_ start getting worse then, because I was _there,_ Harry.” Ron’s voice grew louder and brittle. “Do you have _any_ idea how scary it was to find you sprawled out in one of the shower stalls? Not able to _talk_ to me or tell me what was wrong when I shut off the water and shook you? Just gasping on the tile?"

Arthur went rigid at the mental image alone, and the other two adults with him seemed to feel much the same. They watched the two of them go at it much like one watched a potion explode, frozen and letting the disaster happen. He caught a glance from Sirius, who looked rather ashen, and then panned over to Molly, who looked fit to start crying. Just when it looked ready to devolve into a shouting match, Sirius broke in. 

“Is that true, Prongslet?” 

His voice sounded so earnest and his eyes were wide with an almost lost, childish worry, and Harry looked to the side. Ron, flushed bright red now and very upset, said quickly. 

"Harry's left arm has _always_ bothered him after we got Ginny out of that stupid Chamber, but back in November, near the end of the month, it got so bad that he passed out in the shower and wouldn't―wouldn't respond to me for _minutes_. He got me to leave it alone but I made him promise to get help if it happened again," And then he looked over at Harry, "But you didn't, did you?"

"Ron."

"How many more times did it happen, then? Twice? Three times? Eight?" Ron shoved a finger in his chest. "We don't _know_ what's up with you, all we knew is that it didn't _kill_ you the first time! We had _no_ guarantee it'd be a one-time thing, or―or that if it happened again, it _wouldn’t_ . Are you _trying_ to die?"

There was a pause, before Harry said, "No." Arthur didn't like the pause at all, but before he could think too hard about it, Harry groaned, and flopped against the armchair with his chin tilted up to the ceiling. "Can we just... _not_ do this right now? Yes, I know, I'm a sick and dying little boy _―_ what do you want me to do about it? Strut into St. Mungos like ‘hey my arm hurts suspiciously sometimes, look at this weird scar and tell me there's nothing you can do’?" Harry tilted his head back down just to visibly roll his eyes. "Look, I've already been to Pomfrey a bajillion times since second year and she's never said a word, and I think she's more familiar with my naked body than _I_ am.” He looked vaguely nauseated as he said that part and shuddered. “I'm _pretty_ sure she would've noticed something by now if there was something we could do about it. I'd rather not get labeled as more hysterical than I already am, Ron."

And.

Well.

That was a fair enough point, he supposed. Arthur had been a stone's throw away from picking up Harry and carting him to St. Mungos for real because _honestly_ , November! But Poppy was incredible at her job, and Harry had risen a very valid point. But, still.

"Harry, if this has been going on for as long as Ron's said it has, I don't want you to just dismiss it. When you get back to school, you're _going_ to go to Poppy, and tell her about the specific problem.” Sirius said insistently, and Harry’s head snapped over to look at him. At the protest already rising on Harry’s face, the man held out his hands and said, “I'm sure she screens the living daylights out of you every time you go to her, but sometimes, there are things that can be missed without specific scans. If nothing else, get it confirmed that this is some sort of strange, placebo thing or benign curse―though I doubt that’s what it is. Just get it over with, please. If not for your sake, for mine." Harry looked at him for a moment, but then slowly, grudgingly, he nodded. Sirius gave him a look, and then added, "And I'll be writing to Ron to make sure you _actually_ go. And he _will_ tell on you if you don't," He gave Ron a sharp look. "Won't he?"

Huh. That was perhaps the first moment of maturity that Arthur had ever seen from Sirius. 

Ron was entirely on board with this plan, too, and said, "Absolutely. So, you better go, mate. I’ll even make Sirius tell Mum."

Harry cringed, and this seemed to satisfy Sirius, because he said crisply, "There, crisis averted. Don't think you're getting out of being mothered, though." And then he tilted his head at Molly, deferring to her. “Give him hell, Molly.”

“ _Loving_ hell.” Arthur said quickly. 

By the time it was finally time to send his kids back to Hogwarts, Arthur took Harry aside and reminded him, very firmly, that he was to see Poppy at the first available opportunity. He’d gotten a baleful glare for that, but it was softened as Harry, surprising perhaps the both of them, tugged him into a strong, lingering hug before he scurried onto the scarlet steam engine, face suspiciously darker than usual. 

Arthur watched him go, struck speechless, and memorized the feel of his youngest son in his arms. It was the first hug Harry had ever initiated with him.

And though he didn’t know it then, it would be the last.

* * *

Soon enough after the whole debacle with his arm and the Weasleys―which Harry was still mortified about―Harry made his way back into Hogwarts and into the clutches of Umbridge, who’d he had the blissful fortune of mostly forgetting about during break. 

Writing more lines with his own blood had been a very unpleasant wake-up call, but such was life...which, frankly, had sucked for awhile there. If he was being perfectly candid, half the time, all Harry had wanted to do for the first couple weeks back at school was hide in a closet somewhere and die. This hadn’t happened, though―for reasons that were, actually, entirely unknown even now. Mostly because Pomfrey had taken a deeper look at his left arm the day he’d gotten back to Hogwarts and grudgingly gone to see her, and then proceeded to _scream_ at him for almost half an hour when she discovered _literal shards of basilisk teeth_ fused with his goddamn bones.

The woman was not only furious with herself for never picking them up in her scans, but furious at _him_ for not coming to her _immediately_ after the whole debacle in the Chamber of Secrets after he got bitten by the Basilisk. He’d tried to explain that he’d not died because Fawkes had cried on him and phoenix tears were an all-purpose healing agent, but if anything, she’d just gotten angrier. _“PANACEA_ ** _NOTHING,_** _HARRY JAMES! MEDICINE CAN ONLY DO_ **_SO MUCH_** _WHEN THE SOURCE OF THE POISON_ ** _IS STILL INSIDE OF YOU!”_** She’d screamed, and then yanked him all the way up to Dumbledore’s office to raise hell in there, too, once she learned that the man had taken a look at him all those years ago, blood-soaked and dirty, and told him to just go down to the feast.

Yeah. That had been fun.

At the moment, they were still waiting on some extensive, long-term tests from _the fucking Unspeakables_ to figure out whether or not it was safe to take the shards out, and what, exactly, they’d been doing to him all this time because―shocker―it was _not_ normal to collapse unresponsively to the floor because your arm hurt. Harry didn’t know what the hell kind of tests took almost a full month to do, but if nothing else, he was just glad that Pomfrey had been so preoccupied with his left arm that she’d not even bothered looking at his right one, specifically his hand, because _that_ would’ve opened a whole other can of worms that Harry knew he wouldn’t have been able to shoulder then. And, of course, with all of the blood-writing and medical shit out of the way, Occlumency had come next, and at first, it hadn’t helped matters at all. As was to be expected, Snape took great zeal in ripping his mind to shreds, and prospects seemed rather bleak for a while.

It was many a night that had found Harry foregoing sleep in favor of tearing through a book on Occlumency, shoving down frustration and the threat of tears because he _needed_ to learn it. _If Babbitty Rabbitty could pull off something as batshit as making muggles mold her image out of gold, I can most certainly finish this book,_ Harry had caught himself thinking once in between the space of two pages of another nigh-indecipherable book on mind magic. 

It was embarrassing to start thinking of fairy tales as motivation, but Harry figured that no one was there to admonish him for his unorthodox form of inspiration, and the fairy tales reminded him of who he was really doing this for. He had very nearly thrown in the towel and stopped trying multiple times, but every time he got close, he found himself thinking of that night with Mr. Weasley, remembered why he’d been there at all, and put back on his big-boy panties. There were things that were more important than how he felt, and he’d found that one of those things was Mr. Weasley. His vision may have saved the man’s life, but if things had been different, it very well could’ve ended it, too. Whenever he thought of this, conviction welled back up in him, and he found himself attacking the Occlumency texts and working on the practice with increased vigor. Snape’s shitty teaching be damned, Harry was going to learn Occlumency whether the man bloody well liked it or not. Mr. Weasley was worth that and more, of this Harry had been certain.

So it was, perhaps, to both Snape’s and his surprise that his hard work had actually been paying off. Each minute of struggling and every frustrating second of practice had been worth it, because Harry got exponentially better and better at blocking Snape from his mind with every lesson. Truly, if he were slightly more foolish, he might’ve thought Snape was impressed with him. He could swear that, just a handful of times, he saw a flash of what looked like approval on the man’s sallow face, which was rather frightening to say the least. With his incredibly rapid improvement, however, Snape quickly increased their training sessions until it was every night of the week since he “clearly did not need a recovery period” and because it “wouldn’t do to dally and waste time when you’ve already got such a strong grip on this.”

Harry would’ve been annoyed by this if he still had Quidditch, but alas, Umbridge. So, since he had literally nothing better to be doing, he went along with it without complaint. He spent many hours a week getting mentally assaulted by Snape and coming out relatively unscathed, which was all well and good because this was apparently speeding up how long they’d have to partake in the lessons. It seemed that Snape had been expecting these lessons to go on for _much_ longer than they were actually shaping up to, and seemed just as relieved as Harry that soon enough, they wouldn’t have to spend much time looking at each other’s ugly mugs for hours every night. 

Things seemed to line up with that good note. So far, the Unspeakables hadn’t raised the alarm on Harry’s arm, so that was one stressor out of the way. Ron had been appeased by him checking the arm out―Harry had _not_ told him about the basilisk teeth shards and just told him it was a weird phantom-pain thing Pomfrey was taking care of―so everything was alright in that avenue. He didn’t even have detention with Umbridge anymore because he’d been so goddamned focused on the Occlumency thing that he’d literally forgotten to be an asshole to her, so now he wasn’t slicing his hand open every night. The D.A was doing just fine and seemed to be in high spirits, and they’d yet to be busted. His newfound friendship with Neville was flourishing, and the guy himself was panning out to have an _incredible_ knack for Defense Against the Dark Arts under Harry’s tutelage, which was not only an ego boost for Harry, but also a source of pride in general because _hell yeah,_ Neville. 

So, of course, just when it seemed that things were starting to shape up, that’s when everything fell to shit in one fell swoop.

Because Snape had broken through. 

At first, Harry wasn’t even sure what had happened. He’d been glancing off Professor Snape’s attacks, examining a crack in one of the wood shelves that held Professor Snape’s many salves, poultices, and reagents and making a mental note to point it out so the shelf didn’t up and collapse. The man had been in a particularly foul mood lately, and things always went wrong when you were angry, so he figured he’d alert him before the shelf could become Fate’s side-slapping casualty. But then, he’d turned, made proper eye-contact, and he’d snarled and pressed _hard,_ ridiculously hard, like an anvil falling from a skyscraper, and Harry could only gasp before his walls were plowed inwards and he was sent, spiraling, into his own head. 

He sat on the floor for a moment, and looked around, puzzled. He made eye contact with Snape who, frankly, looked just as surprised as him―which was saying a lot―and that was when he froze. 

Because right past Snape’s shoulder, there stood Aunt Petunia. 

There was a bare moment of incomprehension as she walked _through_ Snape’s chest―he cursed loudly, which Harry would’ve laughed at any other time, and then she rapped on the cupboard door. A horrible, whinging little sound came out from the grimy vents that he knew so well, and he forgot to even try to push Snape out of his head, too caught up in the absolute horror of the moment.

Cold panic _swept_ through him, leaving him breathless, and Harry staggered to his feet as Aunt Petunia, with a put-upon sigh, fiddled with clanking keys and began to unlock the door. And Harry watched, numbstruck, as his own emaciated little body flopping out of the cupboard and sprawling across the tile. Soiled and flushed with fever, delirious and in pain, struggling to stand while being stared down by Aunt Petunia.

“Look at you,” She sneered, “Just look at the mess you’ve made of yourself in there. Absolutely foul.” 

His gaze flickered to Snape, wordless, and watched the man’s go so carefully blank, so perfectly emotionless. He looked down at his younger self, and watched as he began to cry.

“Don’t do that, don’t you dare.” Petunia snapped. “You should know by now not to cry―you’ll win no sympathy from me! It’s your own fault you were in there. We wouldn’t have had to lock you in there for so long if you’d just followed our instructions, but you just had to be―to be freakish, didn’t you?”

And Snape was looking at _him_ now, as if he’d never seen him before, and a sort of hysteria rose up in Harry’s throat. No. No, no, _no._

“It always has to be something with you." She prodded him with her foot harshly.

Snape’s face flickered.

―And Harry began to _struggle._

_Kicking―_

_**―screaming―**_

 **―get out, GET OUT.**

"Broken really is your birthright, boy, just like your waste of space parents.” 

**―This isn’t your memory, you CAN’T SEE THIS―**

“Now up! Up! Into the shower with you!”

**―YOU AREN’T ALLOWED TO SEE THIS―!**

“And be grateful I’m kind enough to give you even that. Go!”

Snape opened his mouth, and that was when an awful, howling force burst free from Harry, ripping them straight out of the confines of his head and sending them both ricocheting away from each other. Glass shattered and wood groaned, light flickered and Harry was yelling, or maybe he wasn’t, and Snape hadn’t made a sound, and he thocked his head on the wooden door, and it all went silent.

Horribly, horribly silent. 

Harry heaved for breath on the grimy, gray-toned floor, back pressed to the door. The office, gloomy and dimly-lit as ever, was fine in his vicinity. The shadowy walls were still neatly lined with shelves of large glass jars filled with slimy, revolting things, bits of animals and plants, floating in potions of varying colors. But straight ahead of him was nothing but wreckage with Snape blasted straight into the middle of it, out-cold on the floor. 

Harry watched, numbstruck, as a trickle of blood trailed down Snape’s wrinkled forehead, and slowly, shakily clambered to his feet. Various ruined potion reagents littered the tile just ahead of him, shining dully in the light filtering down from the ceiling. The dark, smelly air sat heavy in Harry’s lungs as he gasped, nausea rising in him, because―because― 

He could still see it.

His own emaciated little body.

Little, paper thin bones and wide, bleary eyes. 

Struggling to stand, sobbing at her feet. 

_Broken is your birthright._

He shook like a leaf, fumbling for the doorknob as Snape began to groan, shifting among the guts and plants and blinking uncomprehendingly just mere paces away. 

He’d seen. 

They locked eyes. 

“You saw.” Harry said quickly, chest rising and falling, faster and faster. “You saw, _you saw it―”_

He found the doorknob. Snape’s eyes flew to it. 

“Potter, do _not.”_ He said warningly, yellow teeth flashing in the light, but his words fell on deaf ears. 

The door fell open, and before Snape could get out another word, before he could so much as wave his wand, Harry was _running._

* * *

_'I'll be quiet, it would be just to sleep at night. And I'll leave once I figure out, how to pay for my own life too.'_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Poppy: So you're telling me. That you walked into Minnie's office, COVERED IN BLOOD  
> Poppy: and ALBUS SHEPHERDED AN UNHARMED GINEVRA DOWN HERE FOR A _CALMING DRAUGHT_ but TOLD YOU.  
> Poppy: THE KID _COVERED IN BLOOD_  
>  Poppy: THAT ALL YOU NEEDED WAS _**FOOD AND SLEEP**_  
>  Harry:  
> Harry: ok yeah that _was_ kinda whack.  
> Harry: but in my defense I was twelve 
> 
> Also. IN REGARDS TO THIS LINE: "And he didn’t know it then, it would be the last." AT THE END OF THE FIRST SCENE. OBVIOUSLY ITS NOT TRUE, BUT IT DOES FORESHADOW SOMETHING....


	5. Dead on Arrival

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Well. Harry makes a new friend, but At What Cost

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Convo between me and my coolest friend ever, Aspen
> 
> Aspen: take a shot every time harry says or thinks fuck  
> Aspen: tbh if i played that game with my professor today id have been shitfaced by the end of class and i love that for him  
> Me: hell yeah. In fairness i think he thought fuck a grand total of like  
> Me: eleven times this chapter? which is all well and good because he is, like. having a ~crisis~ and getting mindfucked by a creepy forest ring. so he gets a pass.  
> Aspen: yeah thats fair.

Poppy read the letter from the head of the Unspeakables once. Then she read it twice. A third time, a fourth time, and a fifth time. Still, the words didn’t make any more sense than they had in previous readings. 

She sucked in a long, steadying breath, and let it out slowly. 

Wonderful. 

Somehow, _someway,_ the Basilisk teeth shards in Harry’s arm were _apparently_ one of the only things keeping him stable―which was already a nightmare of a statement from the get-go, but she digressed. The point was, they couldn’t be removed without jeopardizing Harry’s continued health, as assbackwards as that sounded, so they were out of luck from that angle. Something about how his body had formed a unique symbiosis with them that “stabilized his core” and “worked to quell problematic fluctuations of MGRJ 7.67 levels”, whatever _that_ meant. 

Why he _wouldn’t_ be stable without them in the first place was still a mystery they were trying to unearth, which was something Poppy didn’t even want to _begin_ thinking about lest she feel like even more of a failure than she already did. You know, for not noticing, again, the **_basilisk_ ** _teeth shards_ in his arm in the first place. 

No, the only thing she _had_ to worry about at the moment was how the fuck―let her reiterate―how the _fuck_ she was supposed to explain to a fifteen year old boy that his blood had become a _panacea_ and that the Unspeakables were _begging_ him to donate blood on the weekly for the sake of the Wizarding World. And _then―_ because Morgana save her, there was a _then―_ she had to worry about how to explain that he was functionally immune to poison to boot without the rebound effect of him immediately attempting what _would_ be suicide for anyone else. Because Harry was a _Gryffindor_ , and she could already imagine him being a clown and chowing down on belladonna _just because he could_ and inadvertently getting high off his ass or something equally ridiculous.

She pinched the bridge of her nose at the very thought, and resisted the urge to throw something. Then, she promptly decided to just let self-restraint fly out of the window. Much like the quill she launched across the room a moment later. It soared into a small, empty vial and sent it sailing to the floor with a satisfying crash, and she laughed in a hysterical sort of way. Merlin, Morgana, and Circe, preserve her and _stop_ screwing with her, _please._

“Harry _Potter.”_ She muttered under her breath as if it were a curse, and stood. 

She tiredly opened her well-used liquor cabinet, fished out a bottle and a shot glass, and filled it to the brim with firewhiskey. She looked morosely at the amber liquid swirling in it before she decided to leave it alone in favor of just taking a _hearty_ swig from the bottle itself. Harry _Potter_ indeed.

“Cannot _believe_ I still work here.” She sighed raspily, and set the bottle down with a clunk. 

Mental note. Ask―no, _demand_ for Albus to give her a raise.

* * *

Unbeknownst to Poppy, she wouldn’t get the chance to relay any of this information to Harry. Not for a long time. 

Because Harry, as per the usual, was on the verge of doing something incredibly stupid. 

Mostly because he was panicking, though―as one would do once someone you hate discoveries a ginormous vulnerability through, oh, he doesn’t know, _seeing the time you got locked in the cupboard for a whole fucking week._

Harry would like to implore you to understand the terror of the moment, thanks. 

As it stood, he was nearing full-blown hysteria in his deserted dorm room and wishing very dearly that he wasn’t. The room itself was even responding to this, which really wasn't helping matters―vials on the desks were rattling, the beds were trembling, the blankets were curling and uncurling, pillows were shredding, doors were swinging open and shutting, and the windows were coming up and down, _slam―slam―slam._ His eyes flitted around the rioting room and he drew in quick, half-aborted gasps, hands trembling by his sides. He had no goddamn idea how he’d gotten here, but he was pretty sure that it’d happened way too fast, and had a sneaking suspicion that he’d probably bowled over a couple throngs of those idiotic first years―

_slam―slam―slam― fsh―FSH―fsh―FSH― crunch――crunch――crunch_

_rattle―rattle ― BANG――BANG――BANG― boom―BOOM―BOOM SLAM―SLAM――SLAM―――_

_―_ who stood in circles in the middle of the corridor along the way. The top of his right hand itched beneath the bandages wrapped too tightly around it as pressure blundered through his chest and threatened to crack his ribs, and he made a twitch towards his rattling bed, because underneath it was _dark―small―safe―won’t touch you can’t touch you―can’t see you can’t hurt―_ before he stopped himself with a full-body jerk.

_What the fuck is wrong with you, you fucking freak._

Some sick, festering little wound inside of him was bleeding now, begging to be filled again, but he was _not_ going to do it with the knife that had made it in the first place. Not now, not _ever,_ he _couldn’t._ It didn’t _matter_ if it was small and―and safe and _quiet,_ he would _not._

_Dammit,_

_slam―slam―slam― fsh―FSH―fsh―FSH― crunch――crunch――crunch_

_rattle―rattle ― BANG――BANG――BANG― boom―BOOM―BOOM SLAM―SLAM――SLAM―――_

“No, no, _no…”_ He muttered under his breath, looking to the window instead and breathing hard. 

A heavy sense of dread swam up and swallowed his heart, billowing through his chest like the curtains attached to the open window of the dorm room. His knees grew weak. He had to physically fight the urge to curl down and in on himself like he used to in his cupboard. The world went dark around the edges as it all just got worse―and _worse_ and he started slipping, truly, honestly _believing_ for a second that perhaps he’d never left the cupboard, and then pretending that he wasn’t hoping that it were so. _Because anything, anything would be better than this and you know it, you know that’s where you belong, you awful, awful creature, you deserved it, every minute, every crayon stroke, every single backwards R―_ A wave of revulsion for himself washed over him, making him teeter dangerously close to sicking up right where he was, and an irrational terror began to well up in his chest, burning hot and cold simultaneously and whispering that he ought not to turn around, _don’t you dare turn around,_ lest he see his dingy old cot. 

And with that irrational terror came other irrational fear, and the worst part of it was that almost none of it was imaginary; just residual feelings cropping up. It was silent in the room, dead silent, and he could hear it buzzing in his ears, he could see the walls closing in around him now, and he did not call out. _No one will answer,_ he thought feverishly, curling his arms around himself as if it could do a thing. _No one ever does, and if they do, they’re mad. You’re not here. You’re not here. Can’t be angry if they forget you’re here._

Buried memories, buried _feelings_ resurged in the moment―the _hunger,_ the―the empty fear of the spiders, the glare of his bare lightbulb, the _sick_ , the _filth..._ Harry could feel his skin crawling with the residual feeling of the dirt, the stench of _piss_ and dirt from the third time he’d passed out in the garden, the iron tang from crusty blood on that awful carpet when he wasn’t fast enough to avoid getting clobbered with the frying pan—No.

 _No,_ he would not think of it. Harry would not think of it. Not anymore. He _couldn’t_ think about it because then he’d relive that memory again, when they didn’t open the door, and the stench, the fever, the dehydration, the aching hunger, the lapses in consciousness before she’d opened it, before he’d been given water for the first time in a week and how nice it felt in his throat, that awful, _awful_ blankness on Snape’s face—no, no, _no. STOP_ it god _dammit―_

_**slam―slam―slam― fsh―FSH―fsh―FSH― crunch――crunch――crunch**_

_**rattle―rattle ― BANG――BANG――BANG― boom―BOOM―BOOM SLAM―SLAM――SLAM―――** _

_I,_ Harry thought, in a dazzling moment of clarity, _am acting like a fucking lunatic._

He forced himself to take a deep breath, then. Then another. In-out, in-out, in-out. With every exhale, his hysteria drained slowly, receding just as soon as it had set in, the room fell into a sudden, tense silence. His face began to prickle in shame.

Good lord, could he have been more of a nutjob?

"Oh, my god." He croaked, burying his face in his hands, throat tight. 

_Perhaps the Prophet is on to something,_ he thought morosely, and sighed shakily. How on earth was he ever going to get through tomorrow if one bad memory sent him spiraling like this? How embarrassing.

And forget tomorrow, Harry thought, think _today?_ Hadn't he just―run through the hall? How had he looked? He couldn't remember, and somehow that was worse than anything. How many people had he just made a fool out of himself in front of?

God, all Harry wanted to do now was just―just _disappear._ He floundered in place, trying to think of something to do and wishing, then, that there was somewhere to hide, because now that the moment had passed and it was over with, he wanted to forget it all. It was a bad habit of his―retreating like he wanted to right now after moments like that―but it was so much _easier_ than trying to examine...whatever the hell that had been. God.

It was about then that Harry caught sight of his cloak lounging on his pillow, shining in the light as if to say, “Hey ding-dong, remember me?”

And suddenly, lightbulb moment. Harry had a _great_ idea. 

By that, he meant an idea that he would undoubtedly regret within the next half hour and scold himself for thinking of, but _currently_ sounded awesome. 

He _would_ disappear _._

Yes, he thought, he _would._ He'd take his cloak, hang out under there for awhile and then―and then what? His eyes flickered to the innocuous parchment on his bedside table, and he snatched it up quickly. He'd take the map, of course, so Ron couldn’t track him down and ask what the hell was up with him, and―and take his cloak to hide beneath, and maybe a book to occupy himself with. He’d take a _whole_ day, maybe even longer, just for himself. Hide from questions, especially the horribly uncomfortable ones un _do_ _ubtedly_ coming his way because there was _no_ way Snape wasn’t crowing about his discovery in the staff room right now, bastard that he was. Harry would simply re-emerge once he got his shit together enough to brave the humiliation of it all.

It was starting to come together now. 

He could camp out in―no, not the Room of Requirements, his friends knew where it was and would drag him out because Hogwarts, the traitor, would let them in―maybe the...ugh, fuck, he didn’t know. The Chamber of Secrets? Huh. That was an option, seeing as he was literally the only person who could reasonably access it, and who the hell would think to look there anyway? It was gross down there though, and his vast arsenal of cleaning spells aside, he didn’t much fancy the notion of wasting time cutting through all the muck and, y’know, hanging out with the corpse of the huge arsehole of a snake that had caused Pomfrey to look like she was having trauma flashbacks whenever she saw him. Harry didn’t know—if nothing else, perhaps the House Elves in the kitchens would let him hide in the pantry or something. He was an honorary house elf for a reason, dammit.

With a vague way out put into place, Harry crept towards his trunk, still gasping slightly in the aftershocks of panic, and crouched down to rummage in it for what he’d need. And just as he got his hand on the buckle― 

Someone knocked on the door. 

You know the panic he was just basking in the aftershocks of? _That_ panic? Yeah. It was back now, flooding through Harry’s veins in a rush of a near-tangible, snide drawl of _“miss me?”_

And it hit a fever pitch the moment―the _moment―_ that McGonagall’s voice came echoing through the hardwood, noticeably softer than usual. 

_And this,_ Harry thought somewhere in the back of his mind, _is exactly why I was going to leave. Fuck me._

“Mr. Potter? Would you open the door, please?”

 _She knows, she_ **_knows―_ ** He thought wildly, shame washing over him like the cold sweat breaking out down his neck. A breeze wafted in through the window his magic had been slamming open and shut mere minutes before, sending an involuntary shudder cascading down his back as he swallowed. His throat felt so awfully dry and his legs felt so terribly heavy. McGonagall ( _McGonagall!)_ was _outside the door,_ and she was―she was going to have a _talk_ with him, get him all―all _bad_ inside, and he was going to make a _goddamn_ fool out of himself and she’d think he was so stupid, so _weak―_

The wavering curtain made a strange shadow across his face. He looked to the window. 

“Mr….oh, confound it all, _Harry. Please_ let me inside. If you don’t respond, I’ll come in myself. _”_

Oh hoh. Another lightbulb moment. 

The doorknob rattled. 

Harry didn’t think, didn’t even hesitate either, which made for a damning combo on even the best of days. In a split second decision, in a fit of what he’d notice was exceptional magical power any other day, he shrunk his trunk wordlessly, wandlessly―and made a running leap for the _window._

Might Harry remind you that Gryffindor Tower is on the 7th floor of Hogwarts. 

Harry was falling―and falling―and _falling_ , tumbling downwards and whipping through the gentlest flurry of snow before he got the sense to slap himself in the chest and, willing it to work, yell, “MINPONDUS!”

The featherlight charm, against all odds, actually _worked_.

At once, Harry was struck with the dizzying sensation that the snow had halted mid-fall, for now he himself was moving at the same speed. It was almost beautiful, the sudden stillness. As if he were the eye of the storm, or perhaps just a part of it, as insignificant, as forgettable as a simple speck of frost. It was nice. 

And then he looked down.

See, what Harry had forgotten was that it was broad daylight, and a kid toppling out of a window was pretty noticeable, especially when in and of himself, Harry’s general color scheme was a stark contrast to the gray and white of the snow. He could see several students frolicking in the powder down below, and gasped. Shit.

“Talpatum,” He whispered, prodding his side with the wand he’d just remembered he had on him, and at once he felt the strange, oily slide of the Disillusionment charm wash over him. Phew. 

He shoved his wand back into the pocket he'd previously forgotten, and thought as he drifted down. Room of Requirement was out, Chamber was out on the basis of "ew", kitchen was a possibility but seemed shallow...where could Harry go, that no one ever approached, that no one would ever think to look for him? Somewhere no one would ever even _consider,_ but that he could reasonably get to quickly?

It took him a moment, he'll admit it, but as if he had woken suddenly, it dawned on him.

The Shrieking Shack.

It was dusty, decrepit, and gross, but Harry had his wand and a bunch of cleaning spells to shoot out of it. That wasn't a problem. It was empty, far away, and no one dared approach it, for it was "haunted". And the only people who _would_ think of it weren't allowed at Hogwarts, and the best way to it was...oh.

The base of the Whomping Willow was covered in snow at the moment, he could see it now. And he couldn't dig it out without it being blatantly obvious where he'd gone. He was put out for a moment, and very nearly abandoned the plan...when he turned his gaze to the forest.

The Whomping Willow was _nearby_ the Forest. 

Harry looked at the tree, where he knew the tunnel was, followed where he was sure the length of it was, and sure enough, he could trace it to the Forest. So, if the tunnel was under the Forest, and it led to the Shrieking Shack...well, it stood to reason that he could spelunk through the Forest to get there too.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, Mr. Weasley's voice warned once more, just as he'd done over a month ago, "I know you’ve got a history of tromping around in there, so I’m telling you now, do _not_ go back in there.” and Harry chewed on his lip guiltily.

 _Well, he didn't make me promise,_ Harry thought, but sent a mental apology to Mr. Weasley all the same. _I've got my cloak and―and my wand. And my trunk, hah. It'll be fine._

Perhaps grabbing his trunk had been slightly overboard, Harry considered as his feet finally touched down on the snow, but it mattered not. He was _not_ about to go all the way back up to the tower just to put it back, and it wasn't heavy or anything anyway. It was fine in his pocket.

His feet made virtually no imprints in the snow with the Featherlight charm still over him, so Harry, deeming the disillusionment charm strong enough, stuffed his Invisibility Cloak into his pocket and began to sprint towards the Whomping Willow. 

He ascended a mound of snow and nearly stopped when he noticed the distance between it and the next, and in a split second decision, he _jumped_. He went cascading over mounds of snow as if he were the embodiment of his own Patronus, and he very nearly laughed, genuinely, at the thought. Soon enough, his feet touched down again, a thrill of chill running up the soles of his shoes, and he ran again, looking back at the distance he'd cleared with a single jump with a grin.

This was...this was _fun!_ He nearly stumbled mid-footfall when he realized, very suddenly, for just how long he'd been without that feeling.

Harry was running away, bounding over snow and leaving no marks behind, he was _escaping,_ and it was _fun._

It was _free._

Into the forest, racing past the briar and bramble, frosty curtains of leaves and trailing ivy whipping his cheeks pink, Harry laughed, maybe cried, and wondered if this was what the light at the end of the tunnel looked like. He did not think of how upset anyone would be with him, he did not think of what he'd miss, and perhaps for the first time in his life, Harry thought of no one but himself. And it was everything. It was the ultimate euphoria, the strongest rush of bliss, and a wave of relief so overwhelming that he, of course, chose right then and there to go sprawling over a buried tree root.

Really, it was almost pathetic how he fell. There was no sudden, unavoidable crash, nor a pitiable face-down slide. His arms pinwheeled as he drifted down like a feather (obviously) and by the time he could've put his arms down to catch himself, Harry just sighed in exasperation through sharp breaths and let himself face-plant gently.

It didn't matter if he face-planted or not―it wasn't going to hurt. No, if he wanted to enjoy the feeling of powdered chill on his burning face and lay prone in the middle of the trees, and the world was intent on delivering, by all means, he would. He had no one to perform for here.

Really, though. It was kinda nice. The snow had that one pleasant, crisp smell to it, the coldness was soothing to his right hand, now he had just realized that he wasn't going to have to deal with Umbridge and THAT was amazing, he wasn't even heaving for breath because the featherlight charm had exponentially eased his mad dash into the forest, and...well. Harry just felt _good,_ and it was depressingly foreign to him. 

After a moment, Harry rolled over to lie on his back. After a moment of consideration, Harry put his hand over his chest and, willing it to work, tried to cancel the disillusionment charm wandlessly. It took a couple tries, but he got it quickly, and he sighed in relief as that strange, filmy feeling finally left him. He looked blankly up at the sky and stared at the trees, examining how they stretched up above him, and the faint pinpricks of snow that he could see. He marveled at it all, at how strange the world looked from such a low vantage point, and wondered vaguely if this was what Crookshanks felt like all the time. Just as soon as the thought came, he had to blink a bit when a bit of snow managed to get past his glasses. What a journey, he thought, for a snow particle to fall from a cloud and somehow wind up in his eye against all odds.

He was so caught up in the utter tranquility of the moment that you can imagine the shock he got when something chittered right next to his ear.

"AUGH―!" Harry screamed, thrashing in the snow and jerking away from the offender.

Which was...Harry began to laugh. Good Lord. There, right next to where he'd been laying a moment ago, was a little...lizard, thing. Blue-tinted skin, wide, starry eyes, diminutive little limbs, and eyeballing it, barely the size of his own palm. It was _adorable,_ something that Hedwig might like to eat, and Harry felt very foolish for having been scared by it.

"Aren't you an intrepid little fellow," He muttered softly, smiling down at it as he readjusted himself to sit properly.

Of course, this was when it sneezed _adorably_...and a tiny, sharp rod of ice jettisoned out of the ground. Harry stopped dead, eyes going a little wide. Ah. Okay. Maybe he was on the right track, being scared of it. Holy shit.

This was a salamander. An itty bitty baby _ice_ salamander, and Harry had had the luck of stumbling across it. "Oh, Hagrid would be so into you," He said highly, scooting away.

As he scooted away, it tromped a little closer, chittering in curiosity, and Harry died a little on the inside. God, this little guy looked so young―baby salamanders didn't imprint, did they? Hagrid would be thrilled if an ice salamander trailed behind him like a lost duckling, but that in and of itself was alarming enough, and he got the notion that McGonagall would not be nearly as accepting.

Harry slowly raised to his feet, taking a moment to cancel the featherlight charm to keep from tipping over again, and smiled tightly down at the thing. It seemed to take his rising as an invitation to...crawl on top of his shoe. Oh boy.

"Buddy, that is―if you sit there, you're going to get punted into Oblivion, get off." Harry bent down quickly, _very_ gently batting at its legs with his left hand to shoo it off, mindful of his right one. And instead of moving from him, it just. Climbed into his palm. Something in Harry's brain short-circuited. He had a baby ice salamander in his palm.

He hoped―no. He _prayed_ it would not make ice rods shoot out of his hand. That would _suck._

 _Is this the penance I’m supposed to pay for my brief freedom?_ Harry thought with a wince, carefully raising the salamander up as he straightened. _Entertain a little beast that could probably kill me in a moment’s notice?_

"I'm not your mother," He whispered to it sullenly, and began to walk, preparing to toss it into the sky if it tried anything.

It just trilled at him happily, and began to burrow into the warmth of his palm. It almost looked like it was smiling, and Harry found _himself_ smiling despite himself when it closed its eyes, as if happy where it was. "Alright, fine, you've convinced me. You can hitch a ride for awhile, mate."

It squeaked as if it agreed, and he sighed, looking around. "Any idea which way to go?" He asked pointlessly after a moment, realizing suddenly that he was sort of lost. He’d lost track of where the tunnel would be. Yes, he could still get back to the castle and retrace his step, of this he was sure, but that was a lot of effort and if he walked back to the castle, he wasn’t sure if he’d have the willpower to leave again. “I just want to get out of here for awhile.” He muttered, and stopped when a strange feeling overcame him. He blinked it away, shook his head, and walked. 

It popped an eye open and stood like it was actually going to help, and really just spun in a circle in his palm to get more comfortable before resettling. It's tail, however, was pointing a different way now and Harry, on a whim, took that as an instruction and began to walk in that direction, feet sinking deeply into the snow. Why not? Who was going to stop him, or smack him upside the head for listening to a salamander? Psh.

Feeling sillier and sillier by the minute and not caring a smidge about it, Harry looked over the erklings skittering in the underbrush, gazing at him with their eerie, glowing eyes. Some pixies flitted past his head, giving him sideways glances with their own fathomless black pools, just as much as the bowtruckles seemed to emerge from their trees just to stare. A prickle of unease burrowed beneath his skin then, and he pulled the little ice salamander closer to himself, wondering suddenly if this had actually been a good idea.

Because, he thought...this _was_ kind of stupid, wasn't it? Death Eaters and the dear old Dark Lord himself were after his hide, and while what happened was embarrassing, it wasn't enough to go so far as to venture into the Forbidden Forest to get to some dingy shack to angst in. Was it? Even so, though, he didn't think he was quite ready to face the music. Harry dismissed himself, shoving off the unease, and he kept walking.

It was eerily still in the Forest now, and so very quiet. Too quiet. He could feel eyes on him, he thought, and if he were stupider, if he were crazier, he'd think the trees themselves were lying in wait, seeing what would happen. Every step made his doubt grow bigger and that feeling of foreboding grow stronger, and just as Harry was about to stop dead and turn away, admitting that this was foolish, that was when he saw it.

A faint, golden shimmer, shining through the trees.

Harry's heart stopped dead in his chest, and his mind went blank.

It was instantaneous.

He could not avoid it.

One moment he blinked, and in the next, he was gone, as if something had emerged from the ground and tugged him beneath, very slowly, and then all at once. Something deep inside of him, buried in his instincts, had come hurtling to the forefront of his mind, and he was powerless to it. He didn’t think he wanted to fight it at all to begin with. The salamander trilled in his palm, but he bore it no mind as, almost against his will, he took a step. His cloak whispered through the frozen undergrowth as he pressed onwards, but he paid it no mind, caught in the throes of a low, soothing heat thrumming beneath his skin, chasing away the chill.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, Harry could hear Mr. Weasley’s voice.

_“Some speak of a ring that lies nestled on a dark, crumbling twig in a clearing in the woods. The woods are dark, unforgiving, and many are warned against going within the trees.”_

_Ten..._

It happened so fast. Even now, Harry could not describe what exactly happened to him. The leaves whispered above him as he moved, and he heaved in a breath, suddenly exhausted. He took another step. 

He knew, somewhere, that something was off. Something about this was strange. Something was _wrong._ But he...

**_“Some might even say it's forbidden.”_ **

_...Nine..._

He was facing down a clearing, now, drenched in white and guarded by a fierce, dark wall of thorns. Harry stared at the sharp branches in utter incomprehension, unable to form a single thought. Maybe somewhere inside he was screaming, maybe he wasn’t, but he couldn’t tell anymore. The sky darkened above him much like the woods in his peripherals, and a cloud passed overhead, blotting out the sun. His heart thudded slowly in his chest. The cold air swirled in his lungs. _In―out,_ he thought. His legs shook. Something was...

_“One day, a man ignorant of such cautions ventured into these very woods in search of an animal to slay for his dinner. He wandered for hours, snacking on the various nuts and berries the woods had to offer, and was just about to give up and return home when he found himself facing down a glimmer of golden light.”_

... _Eight..._

Yes, Harry could see it now. That faint, golden glow that had drawn him here, like a moth to a flame. He understood at once why the man had walked towards it. As it to reach it, as if to cup it in his palm, Harry reached for it, and the thorns blocking his way began to creak and crackle. As if they were strands of waterlogged hair, wavering strangely in the murky blackness of a lake, the thorns began to curl up and away, as if afraid of his advance. Or perhaps they'd been waiting for it all along. Perhaps this was what they _wanted._

_'...What am I...?"_

_“It was quite a distance away, but, enchanted by its beauty, the man stumbled through the leaves and roots, and soon enough, came crashing into a clearing. The clearing was filled with all sorts of briar and bramble, mainly a scattering of dark twigs embedded in the frost-mottled grass, stuck upright like gravestones that grew into jutting, cutting bushes.”_

_...Seven..._

Harry took a step, and his shoe crunched against the ground, the tenor unlike that of a twig. He jumped, and looked down, just to see that he’d stepped on an animal skull, embedded in the frost. Silence rang in the clearing, and dark shapes began to close in the gaps of the thorns that remained at his sides, and it all almost disturbed him, but he just couldn’t quite...

_“And in the middle of it all stood a series of five, winding branches, protruding from the earth like a perversion of a hand. And on the second finger, there lied a ring, bathed in an ethereal, beckoning light.”_

_...Six..._

And there it was indeed. A ring, nestled snugly on a dark, crumbling twig, the middle branch of the winding wood. He could see it perfectly. The twisting, pockmarked bronze, and the peculiar little adornments in the center. Through the fog in his head, Harry thought that it was beautiful. 

_“The air was perfectly silent, as if holding its breath in anticipation, and filled his lungs with cool, encouraging urgency. There were eyes on the leaves of every tree and in every raised root, and the creatures hiding in the thick shadows watched, and waited.“_

_...Five..._

In the corner of Harry’s eye, he could see a silhouette of a creature, and so great was his unease of this that for a moment, he broke away from his trance just to look. It was as though the world were underwater and Harry was the only thing with air, and he closed his eyes at the dizzying sensation. He opened them again, very slowly, like he was waking up. A centaur stared back, hoof floundering in the snow. His lips moved, but Harry could not hear a word. He stared. He turned. He kept walking. He thought...he didn't know. 

_“No birds chirped, squawked, or even rustled the branches of the uppermost trees, nothing dashed between the grass blades around him, and no insects chittered in the dirt. There was nothing alive here, except for him and the ground beneath him.”_

_...Four..._

There was no grass here, and there were no birds―winter had not yet pulled its claws for the land, and Harry stood within it. He looked around, gazing mutely at the sleeping trees and still, unmoving snow, and trudged onwards, calves burrowing in the snow. And still he moved, as if unimpeded. He just...he _needed..._ With every step, the ring, and the light got closer. Something was moving in his left palm. _What am I doing?_ He thought, and did not think again.

 _“The man, finally, stood before the ring, and stared down at the branch that cradled it.”_

_...Three..._

Harry, finally, stopped and stood before the ring, and stared down at the branch that cradled it. He could hear an insistent tapping in the back of his mind, a fear inside of his lungs that did not quell, and his hand stilled. 

_“A strange tingle prickled his palm,”_

_...Two..._

A strangle tingled prickled Harry’s palm. 

_“And he pried the ring away from its resting place.”_

_...One..._

And Harry pried the ring away from its resting place. 

_“And without thinking, without feeling, and perhaps against his better judgement, the man placed the ring onto his finger to see how it fit.”_

_._ **..Zero.**

And without thinking, without feeling, and perhaps against his better judgement, Harry placed the ring onto his finger to see how it fit.

* * *

At once, clarity slapped Harry _the fuck_ awake and he looked down at the ring, eyes going wide.

Oh god.

Oh―oh _fuck._

 _Fuck_ him, **_no._ ******

“Don’t you _dare_ ,” He snarled to no one in particular, nearly sending the salamander _still_ in his palm flying to the ground. “No, no, _no,_ this is not―this is NOT what I meant when I wanted to get _out of here!_ ” He yelled, very suddenly remembering what he’d muttered before he’d gone the direction the salamander’s tail pointed.

His hand thrummed with warmth and began to shake beyond his control, as if to say, _“Too late, kid.”_ and, snarling, Harry shoved the salamander onto his shoulder. It squeaked in his ear, alarmed, but he ignored it and tried to yank his finger free of the ring. He pried as hard as he could on the damned piece of jewelry, heart pounding, but at once―it was like he’d been dropped into a vat of syrup. His movements slowed beyond his own control, something was shrieking like metal on metal, he gasped for air, and the thorny wall from before began to twist and meld, closing in closer―closer― _closer―_ he _yelled,_ and then―

The world moved beneath Harry’s feet, and he was _falling._

_―falling―_

_―falling―_

_―falling―_

_f_

_― a_

_――l_

_――― l_

_―――― i_

_――――― n_

_―――――― g_

He was twisting in a dizzying amalgamation of colors he couldn’t even begin to understand, and _screaming_ the whole way down. He was tumbling, turning and cartwheeling, ping-ponging left and right, and if it was physically possible for him to do so at the moment, he’d probably be throwing up.

It was so _bright_ just as much as it was so bloody dark, and he had _no_ concept of where the ceiling, the walls, or the floor were. It was an endless abyss, the most terrifying of limbos. 

Faintly, he could hear himself yelling words Mrs. Weasley would scourgify his mouth for. 

When it stopped, it was so jarring that Harry really _did_ almost throw up.

He could’ve kissed the ground―and, second thought, he might actually do just that, because holy _shit._ It felt like his innards were being replaced by some kind of black hole, and he sucked in a deep, steadying breath, trying to blink the spots out of his eyes. Which actually just made it worse. His hands and arms got all strangely heavy, he couldn’t get in a proper breath, and Harry realized very suddenly that oh, God, he was going to pass out. 

_Need to know where the hell I am before I do that,_ Harry tried hard to think clearly, and with immense difficulty, he raised his head to get a gander of his new position. The air around him curled around his head as he did, sweet and... _warm?_ _Why the hell is it warm?_ Struggling to focus and ears beginning to ring, Harry looked around, and noticed, vaguely, the summery flowers blooming all around him. 

Finally, Harry managed to lift his head up, and his breath caught in his throat. He was back at Hogwarts. He barely managed to think, _Oh, you’re joking me,_ and then without any further ado, he collapsed forward, his face getting buried amongst the flowers and the sweet smelling grass. Everything stopped, the ringing in his ears reached a fever pitch, and he knew no more.

* * *

Tom’s cup went crashing to the floor, water spilling all over the floorboards, and he stopped dead. The kids nearby him went very quiet, and he swallowed thickly, trying desperately to reign himself in and not succeeding nearly as well as he hoped. 

“You okay, mate?” A newer kid, Harvey, rubbed at his shoulder, looking concerned. 

Tom shuddered―shuddered!―and breathed out hard, shrugging Harvey’s warm, flat hand off of his shoulder. Something foreign began to swish around his guts and he worried for a moment that he was sick, before he slowly recognized it for what it was―anxiety. But over what? And _why?_ Tom...he wouldn’t be _anxious_ for no reason, there had to be a _reason._

He tried so very hard to push it away, make it disappear into nonexistence, but Tom _couldn’t,_ which wasn’t right at all because Tom could do _anything,_ dammit. 

Something had happened. 

Tom didn’t know what. Not yet.

But it was coming, whether he liked it or not.

* * *

_'When the leader of the bad guys sang something soft and soaked in pain, I heard the echo from his secret hideaway.'_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Harry: oh hahah he's so small and cute  
> Harry: what an adorable little guy.  
> Harry: I could just cuddle with you, omggg so tiny and--  
> Salamander, making ice shoot out of the ground threateningly: :D  
> Harry:  
> Harry: Ok I'll admit that does me a frighten  
> Harry: but ur still cute, so come with me buddy


	6. Turn the Clock

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Recovery period and ruminations--Harry is not doing very bueno lmao.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn't force Aspen to edit this one bcus it was late when I finished it lol. Maybe I'll put in two for the next chapter, we tend to yell a lot when we edit my shit together.

Have you ever woken up knowing right away that something was off?

It's that one gnawing, creeping sensation in your guts when you jerk awake―because you jerk. You always jerk. Maybe not physically, not all the time, but on the inside? It's like you blink, and you're up and at it.

Some people have a tendency to stay still, just lie stiff as a board and listen. Sometimes they sit up and look around right away. And sometimes, right from the start, they call out "Who's there?" or maybe, if they’re particularly ballsy, they come out with, "I know you're there." even if they don't really. Harry himself was much like the foremost of these metaphorical people. 

So, if you've ever woken up like _that,_ Harry would like to assure you that you know exactly how he was feeling the moment he jerked awake in the Hospital Wing.

He took a single whiff of the air and knew _exactly_ where he was _and_ that it wasn't right at all. The room certainly smelled like the hospital wing, but it lacked one vital thing―the citrus-y undertang of that disinfectant spell that Pomfrey preferred. So instantly, he was alert and incredibly suspicious. He knew from experience that you did not fuck with Pomfrey's vitamin C smells―either she wasn't here (which boded very poorly and reeked of Umbridge) or someone was doing something screwy with him.

Deductive reasoning concluded that Harry needed to figure out where the hell he _really_ was and who was supposed to be supervising him, and he needed to do it pronto. And by pronto he meant right the fuck now because holy _shit_ someone had just touched him!

He's not going to make a fool out of himself and tell you that he screamed.

But he screamed.

Granted, it wasn't very loud―more of a strangled conglomerate of "What the fuck" and "Get off me" and "Who are you" (it came out sounding a bit like "WhA-HAH GET FUCK ME WHO OFF THE―” but even worse than that) and he scrambled to sit upright, kicking at whoever was trying to accost him. It was blind panic driving every facet of his actions―when Harry tells you that monkey brain took over, he _meant_ that monkey brain took over. And monkey brain, apparently, was not feeling that great because he was fairly certain that his thrashing should not have been nearly as weak as it was, especially given how much energy he was exerting. Just moments into it had his legs feeling uncomfortably heavy. Crap.

Someone was talking (read: yelling) at him but absolutely none of the words were coming through and just when he was about to land a solid hit through the malaise, they grabbed his foot. He sat there, heaving for breath and utterly incomprehending for several seconds before what happened finally registered, and the knowledge that someone was touching him _and_ now had access to his ticklish little baby toes only served to set him off more because oh _god,_ they had _access_ to his _ticklish little baby toes._ Absolutely horrifying.

He'd like to tell you that he did something cool here, but really, all he did was thrash briefly with reignited vigor, yell something that sounded like the ugly twin of, " _Get off my foot!_ "―and then accidentally fell off the bed, conking his head on the corner of a nightstand cursing the whole way down.

You'll have to forgive him for that because you must understand―he’d woken up feeling sick and gross, had been accosted by an unknown entity, could not comprehend the english language at the moment, had just whacked his head on hardwood, and the aforementioned unknown entity was still touching his foot. This was pure evil and definitely warranted no less than four "fucks" in rapid succession. It really wasn’t helping matters that, try as he might, he couldn't really open his eyes all the way and actually _see_ who was holding his foot.

Because the foot thing was the most important part of it, obviously.

And then―

 _Finally,_ phonetics made sense and came through in the form of a low, soothing voice. "Goodness, aren't you a handful?" 

A hand touched his back and immediately, the throbbing in his head eased. He must’ve made some sort of unhappy noise or something, because they murmured sympathetically. A moment passed, then Harry felt magic wrap around him to hoist him mid-air and directly back into the bed. Just from that gentle treatment alone he knew he was probably not about to get murdered, which was a definite plus in his book. Murderers did not tuck you into bed. At least, he didn’t think so. His knowledge was admittedly lacking in that department. Harry did not pretend to be an expert on murderers, but he was reasonably sure that if you met one, you did _not_ meet them all because everyone had their own brand of psycho.

He was getting off topic.

"Who _are_ you?" He croaked through barely moving lips, throat suspiciously tight as the adrenaline drained away just as quickly as it had come.

"I could ask you the same thing, lad." The voice spoke again, and he noted that it was feminine. Not overly high pitched or shrill like Aunt Petunia (thank God) but more a low crooning tone...kinda like a jazz singer.

She kept talking at him, but Harry was so busy thinking about jazz music that he completely tuned out the nice lady who put him back in bed, and the next thing he knew, he blinked and she was saying, 

"But I think some rest is in order for now, though. Just that scare alone seemed to wipe you out." The blanket on his lap seemed to get warmer and he looked down at it quizzically. Wh… "I'm Madam Goswood. Before you go back down for another kip, can you tell me where you are?"

It took Harry a second to register that he'd been asked a question at all―his head was still very foggy. _All_ of him felt foggy, really. Like when you wake up with all those red lines on your face and you can't remember what year it is, but instead of _just_ that, it was also comorbid with that one gross ickiness you probably associate with being sick. Like there was a marshmallow in his head, and Dudley was puffing it up in the microwave just to watch it melt so Harry’d have to go clean it. Fucking Dudley… He rubbed his eye with a sigh, wondering where his glasses had gone off to and wondering, at the same time, how the hell to answer the question he’d been asked.

"Er...Hogwarts. Hospital Wing." He said slowly, coughing in-between his short sentences. God, it was hot.

"That's right!" Goswood, apparently, seemed pleased with him and he got a glimpse of her blurry hand cupping his knee over the blanket. Her nails were painted purple. "And the date? How about that?"

Oh fuck, what _was_ the date?

"I...don't know?" He said after a minute―was better than being wildly off.

"Any guesses?"

He looked at the window and looked at all the blurry greenery, unease swelling up in his throat and settling in his stomach. It had been snowing earlier…

He decided to just say that. "It...was snowing. Earlier. But now it's green. It’s all green. I don't understand." His voice was almost childish in quality and he wanted to kick himself for it. Probably would've if he had the energy.

"...Snowing?" Goswood repeated softly after a tense moment, frown audible.

Harry nodded, feeling a bit like a bobblehead, and when the breath he breathed out rattled, he cringed. Ew. He shut his eyes and pulled his legs up a little, vaguely wishing Hedwig or Crookshanks was here to keep him company, and remembered at once that hey, he'd had a salamander with him. Where had _that_ little guy gone?

"Hey, er―" He opened his eyes with more difficulty than he thought was necessary, really, and tried to focus on Goswood. "The...er...the little guy. The blue guy." Oh fuck, he'd just forgotten the word. "...lizard...friend? Where'd he go?"

He couldn't really tell for sure because again, he was glassesless, but he was _pretty_ sure that Goswood's eyebrows had raised. "Do you mean the ice salamander?”

AH. That was the word.

"Yeah. Where is he? He liked my hand." Oh, that had sounded dumb, and the weird, groggy quality of his voice wasn’t helping. 

Goswood was smiling now, of that he was actually sure, and her purple-nailed hand reached out to cup his cheek. It was really nice and cool, and she gently prodded him back down with her other hand while he was focused on how nice the first one felt. He hadn't even realized he was still sitting up.

"Why don't you lie down a little longer and worry about that later, lad? You're still a bit under the weather, aren't you? Ooh, and I bet you're so sleepy too."

Oh, she was absolutely right. "You...are very smart." Harry said after a moment. "How'dja know?"

"I know a lot of things." She whispered, and then wiggled her fingers at him teasingly. "A magician never reveals her secrets."

Harry was pretty sure he laughed. And then he went back down, left with a faint impression of blankets being tugged up to his shoulders.

* * *

So. That was Harry's _first_ day in 1942. Could've been better, but all things considered, he got to say "fuck" at an authority figure without being punished and had a really good nap, so it wasn't all bad. His understanding is that he slept through the rest of the week and most of the second one, and thus he was now roosting in week two. But he digressed―while day one was alright, week two left...quite a bit to be desired?

He's not going to bore you with the details because let's be real, this particular author is way too good at writing meltdowns and he'd already lived through a particularly bad one in chapter five, so he'd rather not relive this one too. And, like, the word count is getting pretty high. Just, suffice to say, Harry had had the shock of his fucking life when he'd fully come to about _nine_ days later...and as if that in and of itself had not been enough, _then_ the alleged Madam Goswood retrieved the Headmaster of Hogwarts.

He'd been fully expecting to see Dumbledore's stupid bespeckled face at the time―he was _not,_ however, at all prepared for Armando Dippet to come strolling in like he wasn't supposed to be dead right now. 

This had not gone over well with Harry at all. 

Long story short, there was screaming involved, he was forcibly given a Calming Draught, found out after the fact that oh shit, the Calming Draught was a bit _too_ old, wound up blitzed the fuck out of his mind, astral projected into the 2020s as a consequence of said Calming Draught, and had thus determined that he had been straight up Not Vibing, Bro. 

So. 

After that debacle, Harry had come to discover that, as “a survivor of Grindelwald”, he’d be enrolled in the school on a scholarship and kept on the grounds to heal not only for his own protection, but simply because St. Mungos was rather overwhelmed. And they lacked documents for him anyway. Documents of which Harry ”couldn’t provide” because he was suffering “magical amnesia”. Harry just...went with it. This was more than he could’ve hoped for, really, and a better thing to focus on the veritable laundry list of bullshit he’d _also_ discovered. Such as,

A) Oh fuck. Ron and Hermione weren’t here. They were going to lose their _minds_ and _he_ was going to _die._ Oh _no._

B) He was in 1942. This was the _literal_ worst thing possible. He’d figured this out through reading the Daily Prophet, and gotten a very concerned look from Madam Goswood, who came over to calm him down, when he started hyperventilating. That had not been fun.

C) The fact that he was in 1942 was all this stupid ring's fault because, as it turned out, Arthur's fairy tale was real (‘ _no, REALLY???’)_ and he was _very_ worried about having to strangle the twins when he got back because now they had _ample_ time to wax poetic about all the embarrassing shit they’d seen him do without him there to intervene, and would undoubtedly take advantage of that to the _max_.

D) This stupid ring was fused to his finger―Harry was pretty sure this was somewhat unsanitary, and was very worried about how his finger would look once the ring finally fell off.

E) He'd been here since June 31st. That meant that...he'd be out of here just in time for New Year's in this time. At least, he damn well _better._ Arthur’s story had said the guy was with his mother for two seasons, and there were four in a year. Logic dictated that he’d be here for half a year, and that was six months. 

F) It was February 5th when he left Hogwarts so...er, eyeballing that, he'd be getting back to home around AUGUST. He was missing so much of Voldemort's shit and was honestly freaking the hell out over that, so. That was awesome. And he was also missing, like, his own 16th birthday, but that hardly mattered. 

H) On the subject of H, somehow he had had the sense to tell Goswood his name was Harry _Evans_ when he was high as a kite. It hadn’t been immediately obvious to him when he was normal, but _apparently_ High Harry had recalled that there were living Potters in this time period and if he’d claimed to be one, that would’ve caused a shitstorm. So, props to his past, fucked-up self, and a thankyou as well. 

G) Oh shit, he forgot about G. He really hoped Mc _G_ onagall wouldn’t strangle him when he eventually got back. And also, oh fuck??? There were _living Potters here???_ Dippet had looked at his hair strangely??? Help???

I) He had his trunk and his wand, so he wasn’t _completely_ dead in the water for his education this year. His trunk had all the necessities _and_ a shitload of panic money in it from an impulse extraction at Gringotts awhile back. Basically, he had everything he needed. Well. For the most part. Who would’ve thought his trunk was a perfect “six-month get-away kit”? Certainly not him.

J) Oh hell, Hagrid was probably still a student here. And―oh. Oh my god. Myrtle Warren was probably still—Holy _shit_. 

K) World War II was happening and god _dammit_ he should've paid more attention in history. Here was to hoping he wouldn’t get blown up to high heaven. Christ.

L) He kept making things explode. This wasn’t necessarily a realization as much as it was an _ob_ servation. For some reason, he’d had a _real_ knack for blowing up windows and shit lately. Not cool, magic.

M) And not only was Harry halfway down the alphabet, but he was completely, totally, unequivocally capital M and F Monstrously Fucked. And not even the _fun_ kind. 

Yeah.

Now, Harry had done something naughty―he'd snuck out of the Hospital Wing.

Pomfrey would probably castrate him if he ever did this to her, but Madam Goswood was very nice and relatively easy-going, so Harry was pretty sure he wouldn't get lynched for this. He...gah. He didn't know how to wrap his head around this―around _any_ of this. He didn't know what to think or feel about the fact that he was living in a freaky fairy tale or―or that there was a ring fused to his finger, that he was going to see _Moaning Myrtle_ alive, or that the guy who lived in the hut down the way wasn't Hagrid (some guy called Ogg! Who hated their kid enough to name them Ogg!?) or that...or that...

Harry puffed out a long, exhausted sigh, fogging up the glass of the window whose ledge he was perched on. 

He didn’t know how to feel about how he was about to be all alone at Hogwarts.

On one hand, it was kind of nice? No bickering to sort out or people to do emotional labor for, but on the other...there was no Ron or Hermione to flank him and absolutely _no one_ who knew him. He didn’t know why it bothered him so much that there was absolutely no one in this world that knew who he was, but it was just so. So _strange,_ to sit there and know that no one would scrutinize his every move, and that if he―-if he up and decided to go to _France,_ there would be _no one_ to answer to or even ask after him. 

Not that Harry was thinking of going to France. No, seriously, Grindelwald was still out there and doing fuck-knows-what. Harry had had _enough_ of Dark Lord shit, thank you very much. The thought of Dark Lords made something churn in his gut unpleasantly, like he was forgetting something really important, but he couldn’t put his finger on _what,_ so he did his best to ignore it. 

Just like he was ignoring the ring. 

Which was still, might he remind, on his finger. The same finger he couldn’t quite put down on what was bothering him.

Frowning with a sigh, Harry pressed his palm to the glass on the window, uncaring of how it’d smudge it, and instead appreciated how nice the warm glass felt on his palm as he studied the ring. And, y’know, the pretty blatantly obvious scar on his hand. 

Dippet and Goswood were _very_ concerned about the scar on his hand, actually, which made Harry _really_ question how lax teacher observations had gotten by the time _he’d_ gone to Hogwarts. Like, _yes,_ he was sure that if he showed ol’ Mickey G this... _disgusting_ looking cut she’d raise hell, but he’d had his hand in bandages for weeks now and no one had said a word, not even Pomfrey when she was looking over his Basilisk-Bit arm. But he spent _one_ night in the Hospital Wing in 1942 (1942! He wasn’t over it quite yet) and Goswood had insisted on checking on it. She’d gone quiet once he’d slowly, hesitantly took off the bandages. 

_Scary_ quiet. 

He’d not even been surprised when she swept out of the room, expecting her to be grossed out over it (it did look pretty nasty) but he _had_ been surprised when she dragged Professor Dippet in to look over it with her and exchange some hissing words. He’d sat there awhile, too weak to stand but still able to sweat, and then Dippet had sat on his designated bed very carefully, placed a warm hand on his shoulder, and then asked him firmly but not unkindly about who, exactly had put the scar on his hand...or who _made_ him put it there.

Of course, he couldn’t tell them that Umbridge had done this to him because to his knowledge, she didn’t exist yet, so he’d fibbed something about not remembering. He was pretty sure it had been clear to everyone in the room that he wasn’t being totally honest, but they’d left him alone. They’d both been very, very gentle with him since then, though. 

The ring, on the other hand….er, _same_ hand. Uh. You know what he meant. The ring hadn’t been the cause for much fuss other than Goswood remarking on how it was stuck on his finger, and that she thought it was pretty. Harry, while hating the damned thing, had to concede the latter point: it _was_ rather nice to look at. In fact, it was the sort of thing he might’ve stopped and looked at if given a chance outside of the context. It suited him. Perhaps if circumstances were different, he’d _willfully_ have chosen it. _‘Yeah, you hear that, you horrid hunk of metal? If you weren’t a JERK, I’d like you more!’_

Harry was so busy with trash-talking the ring that it took him a moment to notice the blue little creature lounging on the opposite side of the glass.

Of course, that was when the glass shattered. 

_“AH―!”_ Harry screamed, just about falling off the window ledge in his haste to leap away from the flying glass shards.

It was only _then_ that he heard a strange little croaking squeak and finally noticed his uncalled-for companion. He gaped down at where he’d been sitting moments before, and the sharp pillar of ice that now pierced it. Shards from the once-window were scattered across the flagstones like a thousand tiny daggers, the light from the sun violently shining off them. And in the middle of the carnage, tongue stuck out in the picture of innocence, sat the little ice salamander Harry had encountered over a week ago. 

It squeaked once more, as if delighted to see him. Which was hilarious because it very well could’ve just killed him.

“...Wh―” 

“Hello!? Who’s down there?” 

Harry looked at the broken window, the ice pillar jutting through the stonework, and the baby ice salamander sat in the middle of the wreckage.

Um.

Sweeping forward, Harry cast a haphazard _reparo_ on the window, abandoned all caution and snatched the ice salamander into his palm (he was _pretty_ sure the little guy would get in trouble if he was seen), and―looking around wildly―Harry panicked, sat down quickly, lifted the back of his shirt, and hid the icicle underneath it. He gave one violent shiver as it slid against his bare, warm skin and glared down at the salamander, wondering just what the hell he was doing before Madam Goswood came into sight. He quickly covered the salamander with his other palm, keeping him trapped in his hands, and put them in his lap. Goswood looked down at him, a little red in the face, and he smiled tightly at her.

“What on _earth_ was that ruckus?”

_Play dumb!_

“What ruckus?”

_NOT THAT DUMB!_

Madam Goswood tilted an eyebrow at him and Harry ducked his head, trying to ignore how painfully cold the icicle was beginning to feel on his back. 

“Er,” He muttered, face burning. “I fixed it, but I made the glass blow up.”

“Again?”

He cringed. He’d been doing that too much lately. “Yes, ma’am.”

“I find it very interesting that you’ve broken windows that aren’t in the Hospital Wing,” Madam Goswood said, and then eyed him pointedly as she finished with, “you know. The place you’re meant to be right now, young man?”

Ah. Yikes. “Did you come down this way to look for me?”

“I did,” She said crisply, and then side-stepped just to sit next to him. “Care to explain why you’re not there?”

Oh boy, they were fixing for a conversation. Harry still had the ice on his back, and it was melting now. The level of coldness was painful. 

Madam Goswood didn’t seem to notice anything amiss, nor did she seem mad—she had a bit of an open stance, and if nothing else just looked interested in hearing him out.

“I just...needed to stretch my legs, ‘s all.” Harry said sheepishly, cringing as the salamander moved in his palm. 

Goswood frowned a bit and slouched down to his level. _“Is_ that all?” 

No, it really wasn’t, and Harry would’ve very much liked to tell her so but the ice on his back was so cold that it really _was_ starting to hurt and this salamander did not seem to want to stay still either.

And then, as if aware of his thoughts, the little beast in Harry’s palms croaked. 

Harry froze. 

Goswood blinked. “...What’s in your palm, lad?”

Harry pressed his lips in a line, panic creeping into his joints, and he said tightly, “Er. Definitely not a. Not a. Er. Not a salamander.” A line of frigid water traced down Harry’s spine and he forcibly suppressed a shiver. 

Goswood stared at him long and hard, and his palms croaked again. “...Open your hands.”

Harry stared at her for a very, _very_ long moment before, hesitantly, he did what he was asked. Goswood breathed in sharply. 

“In my defense, _he_ found _me.”_ Harry said quickly. 

“ _Why_ is it in your palm? Where _have_ you been?”

Harry sighed, very agitated what with the sudden interrogatory tone and the ice melting on his back. “I was just _sitting_ here, hanging out, enjoying the sun, and _this_ little guy _shattered the glass_ and sent me screaming. I’ve been _here_ the whole time I―I don’t even think I could get myself to the forest right now _anyway.”_

Goswood, thankfully, believed him (which was good because he _was_ being honest!) and her shoulders relaxed minutely. “How on _earth_ did this little thing break the window?” Madam Goswood asked him incredulously, carefully leaning forward and scratching down said little thing’s spine. 

Harry thought of the icicle under his shirt and sighed, throwing in the towel and standing up, finally giving himself blessed, blessed relief.

Madam Goswood took one look at the pillar of ice he’d been hiding and started to laugh, and buried her face in her hands. “Merlin,” She muttered, and with a wave of her wand the ice dissipated and the stonework rewound itself together. 

“Hahah….yeah. I was just looking at the lake, then that came jutting out of nowhere, breaking the window. I think he was excited to see me.” And then Harry, feeling a bit silly, pointed his finger scoldingly at the little beast in his palm and said, “You’re very naughty.”

The salamander squeaked as if affronted, and Harry huffed a laugh. 

“He’ll have to go back into the Forest,” Goswood said not unkindly, looking out the window. “He’s a wild creature. It’d be dangerous to have him around, you know.” She paused, then said “Ah!” and pointed. “Would you look at that? So that’s where Dumbledore’s gone. He’s out there in the lake.”

Harry, who was a little put out about having to take the dangerous salamander back out to the woods, registered a smidge belatedly that she’d pointed out Dumbledore. “What?”

Dumbledore was here?

Goswood pointed toward the lake again, and Harry followed her finger to see a figure in the lake that _decidedly_ did not look like Dumbledore. He’d not noticed them before. 

“There. He was supposed to collect you earlier and see if you were up for being Sorted, but you vanished. So he went out to the lake, then. I reckon he’s having a chat with some merfolk. See their tails poking out of the water?”

“...Oh.” Well, now Harry felt kinda guilty for causing a fuss. 

“Why don’t we go down and put your friend back where he belongs? And then we can go see Dumbledore? You could use some sun, lad, and if you made it all the way out here I’m sure you can move just fine.” 

Harry trailed behind Goswood as she led the way out to the grounds, duly noticing the way her kitten heels clicked quietly on the flagstone. She was engaged in a running dialogue of where things were in the school, what classes would be nice, and what the Houses were like. Harry mostly tuned her out because he knew all of this, making sure to nod on occasion to feign interest, but he tuned _right_ back in when she said,

“You know, you strike me as a bit of a Slytherin. I reckon that’s where you’ll wind up. They’re not...the _warmest_ bunch, but I’ve got a hunch you’d fit right in.” Goswood suddenly stiffened and, with a blush, hastily amended, “ _Not_ because I think you’re cold, lad. You’re not. It’s the way you hold yourself, ‘s all.”

Harry was suddenly and very uncomfortably reminded that the Sorting Hat had very much wanted to put him there. 

“...Alright,” He said a beat too late, looking down at the ice salamander in his palm anxiously. 

Before Harry knew it, he was facing down the edge of the forest with Goswood on his left, and trying to shoo the Salamander into it. He wasn’t budging, though―he sat on Harry’s palm as if purposefully defiant, and refused to look at him. After a solid three or four minutes of trying to make the little guy go, Goswood laughed softly and said, 

“He really doesn’t want to go, does he?”

Harry looked down at the little beast frustratedly and said, “You don’t suppose throwing him would kill him, do you?”

Goswood frowned at him in clear befuddlement. “Well, no, creatures like that are very hardy―”

This was all the answer that Harry needed, though, and that was how Harry wound up launching a baby ice salamander clear a couple dozen yards while Madam Goswood shrieked in surprise. 

“Alright,” He said, milliseconds after he’d done so, “ _run.”_

And then took off. Goswood said a word Harry thought it’d be most appropriate to ignore and ran behind him. Harry veered for the lake in the distance, remembering what Goswood had said earlier about seeing Dumbledore. It was _extremely_ difficult to run, far more so than it really ought to be, but it was great fun and he did the best he could. Grinning broadly as the fragrant summer air whipped around him, he finally slid to a stop just before the muddy bank of the lake.

“Mr. _Evans.”_ Madam Goswood gasped from somewhere behind him, cantering to a stop. “Why, I never―”

“Gotta run or he’ll find me again. And you wanted to see Dumbledore,” Harry got out between heaves of his own. “So, we’re seeing Dumbledore.”

“Oh, are you now?”

The figure who decidedly did not look like Dumbledore to Harry from a distance certainly looked more like him now, though his nose was much less crooked. Harry stood there, dumbfounded at the sight of his Headmaster looking so young, and forgot to respond. 

Dumbledore didn’t comment, though, and instead smiled at him indulgently. “You caused quite the ruckus with your absence earlier, Mr. Evans. I’m glad you’re alright.”

Right, Harry’d nearly forgotten that. “Sorry for the...er...the inconvenience.” He said dumbly, flexing his toes in the warm, dewy grass. 

“Nonsense, my boy. It’s good to see you on your feet. Romona, you wouldn’t mind terribly if I invited him to wade into the lake with me? I’m having such a lovely conversation with these merfolk and I’d much like to introduce him.” 

Madam Goswood’s name was Romona? Pretty.

“Not a whit,” Romona Goswood said, still huffing. “I’d wade in too, if you’d not mind. Chasing a boy clear across the grounds had made me rather hot.”

“Yes, that was impressively quick, Mr. Evans.”

 _‘And dumb,’_ Harry finished in his head, already feeling an unwanted heaviness creep into his limbs. He’d really have to take a nap like a five year old later, wouldn’t he? Augh. He bent down to roll up his flannel sleep trousers (tried very hard not to overbalance) and, once they were secure above his knee, he waded into the cool lakewater with a happy sigh puffing out before he could stop it. 

He just trudged his way over to Dumbledore, Madam Goswood not far behind, when a merfolk came gliding over to him. He started a bit, looking down quizzically when...ahem, _her_ hand brushed around his calve and she tilted her head at him, looking a bit befuddled by him. He scrutinized her for a bit, looking over her scales and powerful tail. He’d not seen a merfolk since his unwilling rendezvous in the lake for the second task of the...yeah. 

He’d dismissed them as fairly ugly back then, but now that he had time to study one in a calm setting, he noticed a strange, mesmerizing appeal to them. Not conventionally beautiful, not in any way, but a strange appeal nonetheless. He raised a hand and waved at her. Her eyes zeroed in on his hand and she stared for awhile, _very_ still, and just when Harry was starting to worry that there might be mud or something his palm, she went back into motion again. 

She circled around his legs like a shark, smiling dreamily with her lipless mouth, and made a strange, cooing shriek at him. He could tell it echoed all the way into the forest from how the sound contorted behind him. Harry softened a bit―and then she slammed her tail down, and he got drenched with cool lake water. Dumbledore and Goswood made their own sounds of alarm but Harry didn’t even have time to do that. 

“Oh, hell.” He cursed when some got into his eyes, recoiling a bit and wiping at his face. 

Ew. Mermaid pee. She made an odd choking noise and chittered something, and Dumbledore laughed suddenly. 

“What?”

“She’s laughing at you, and said that she likes you.” 

“Well, I like her very much too.” Harry said with a sigh, mopping as much water as he could off his face. “I do not, however, like using lake water as eye drops. Not very fun.” 

Dumbledore chuckled and Harry jerked when his face suddenly dried, and was so discombobulated by it that he nearly toppled over when the mermaid circled particularly close again. 

“How are you liking Hogwarts thus far, my boy?” Dumbledore asked conversationally. 

“...It feels like home.” Harry said vaguely, shrugging uncomfortably and changing the subject quickly. “I’m meant to be Sorted?”

“Ah, yes. I presume Goswood has given you the rundown on the Houses?”

Well, she _had,_ Harry just hadn’t been listening. “Yeah, Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff, and Slytherin. She reckons I might wind up in that last one.” He said lamely, but paused when something shifted in Dumbledore’s face. 

“Oh, does she, now?” He said.

His tone hadn’t changed, and Goswood hadn’t reacted any differently, but Harry...picked up on a certain, warning vibe and tried to change the subject again. 

“Yeah, ahah…” Oh shit, what could he say? “Er. She told me about, er, some of the electives? Runes seemed fascinating.” Harry didn’t actually know if she’d said anything about Runes but after a tense beat, she didn’t say anything against him, so it was probably fine. 

Dumbledore was looking at him strangely now, and Harry averted his eyes quickly, remembering suddenly that Dumbledore was a Legimens. Yikes. There was a lull in the conversation when Goswood suddenly straightened (Harry had not noticed, but she’d bent down earlier to coo at a merfolk child) and asked Dumbledore about OWL results for his class. 

While the adults had their conversation for awhile, Harry stood there awkwardly, not quite sure what to do with himself. He busied himself with trying to tie kelp together with his feet (much to the mermaid’s amusement) with minimal success and looking over the grounds, still a bit flabbergasted by the lack of snow. At one point he watched Ogg, the gamekeeper, amble towards the gates of Hogwarts with his old man gait and waved sheepishly when the man did so first. Right when they were getting into the semantics of transmogrifaction of bone structure and his feet were starting to hurt, Harry sighed, feeling sleepy under the warm sun and trying to think of something else to distract himself. 

He was busy clandestinely studying the cute little mole on the corner of Goswood’s cheekbone when she turned and her face suddenly drained of color.

He wondered what on Earth was wrong as she looked pointedly into the woods, and then she said, “Oh _my…”_

Harry turned…and saw a veritable army of forest critters staring back. 

_‘What the fuck.’_

He froze, heart stuttering in his chest. The mermaid by his knees made a pleased little squealing noise but he completely ignored it. Just eyeballing it, he could see thestrals, unicorns(?!), acromantulas, bowtruckles, erklings, and a whole bunch of other shit just. Er. Just. _Sitting_ there. _Watching._ He couldn’t shake the feeling that they were looking at _him._

Hesitantly, he raised a hand. “...H’llo.” He called, voice carrying over the water he had waded in. He exchanged a look with Goswood and Dumbledore. 

Christ, this was weird. 

None of the creatures moved for a moment, but to Harry’s hair-raising (Excitement? Anxiety? Unadulterated horror?) _something,_ a couple thestrals and some unicorns pushed through the cloud of critters and began to _approach._

“Oh shit,” He cursed, forgetting momentarily that he was next to Dumbledore. 

One by one, the mixed amalgamation of silvery-white and black came cantering over to _him,_ ploughing through the water as if it wasn't a hindrance at all, just to stop before him. 

_‘What._ _What._ _.’_ Harry thought wildly, making eye-contact with one of the largest unicorns he’d ever seen. It’s horn gleamed in an almost menacing manner in the setting sun, and Harry swallowed. 

It crept closer. It lowered it’s head, until it’s horn was pointed right at his forehead....and then nosed at his cheek affectionately. 

_What._

As if this was the necessary catalyst, the rest of the menagerie suddenly closed in and began to―to―Harry didn’t even know _how_ to describe this other than to say that they all began to caress him and seek some pats in return. He hastily stroked the side of a particularly insistent thestral and nearly got bowled over by another on his left, having to clutch on to another for dear life. It was a cacophony of simpering, pleased-sounding whickers and huffs in his ears as well as a vague trill from down below and Harry shrunk, entirely overwhelmed.

“Why, I’ve never seen anything like it!” Dumbledore murmured in hushed astonishment.

Harry, who was busy being harassed (read: relentlessly nuzzled) by the unicorns and thestrals, could only gape at him and squeak, “ _What?”_ One of the unicorns suddenly rested their head on top of his and Harry slowly raised his hand to stroke it’s―Harry looked down― _her_ mane. “I am _not_ a Disney Princess, guys, _please_ get o―OF. AH.” Harry batted a thestral away from his ear, of which it had just snorted into. “ _That_ was foul. _Ew.”_

Goswood began to laugh, seemingly delighted by the sight of him, and Harry hastily disembarked from the throng of thestrals and unicorns, wading through the water as fast as his stick-thin legs could carry him. _‘No, no thank you, we’re not doing this today.’_ Of course, this was almost immediately rendered a useless effort because it took mere moments for him to lose his breath and have to stop. Trudging through water should not have been nearly as exhausting as it was but he’d already wiped himself out earlier anyway. Nine days in a hospital bed did that to a guy. He could only grumble under his breath when one of the thestrals gained on him in seconds and butted it’s head under his arm to tug him along, as if being helpful. 

“I don’t like you,” He groused moodily, hunching his head down as his neck prickled with the weight of Goswood and Dumbledore’s stares.

“Are you alright, my boy?” Dumbledore asked softly.

“Just tired. Haven’t exactly been moving much this past week and a half,” He shrugged, nearly tripping over a reed in the water. “In all seriousness though, I should get back to the castle, shouldn’t I? Madam Goswood said I could be sorted today, and the Sorting Hat can’t do it’s thing when my fat head isn’t beneath it, can it?” 

“Right you are, Mr. Evans.” Dumbledore said brightly, but as Harry turned to look at him, he had a very strange look on his face. “Let’s be off, then.”

“I’m _already_ off,” He mumbled under his breath, and gave the stink eye to the thestral supporting him as it whickered, like it was laughing.

* * *

Tom’s breath caught in his throat and he clenched his fists, huffing out sharply through his nose as if to dispel the icy, tingling anxiety that raced up his spine when someone’s palm cupped his arse. If he was in any other alley, such a happenstance would’ve earned his assailant a trip to the healers at St. Mungos, but Tom was in Knockturn Alley, and since he was young, fresh-looking, and pretty, this was par for the course.

Making a scene here would only mark him as a target, so instead of doing such, Tom flicked his fingers over his shoulder and shot a overly strong stinging hex at whoever was trying to accost him. He didn’t bother to turn back and look―just kept walking, trying to hold himself together and suppressing the phantom feeling of another hand on his flesh. He surreptitiously scrubbed at his arms as he walked, trying to rid himself of that awful, creeping sensation on his skin and hoped against hope that there wasn’t an embarrassed, angry flush visible in his cheeks.

He watched raptly out of the corner of his eyes as the ratty addict slunk away with a couple muttered curses, taking a moment to scoff as they went. Once they were out of sight, he rolled his shoulder properly to rid himself of that prickling feeling of discomfort when it became clear his scrubbing wasn’t helping, and he grimaced as his shoulder stuck to the fabric of his shirt, adhesed there by sweat. 

Ew. How dare his body have functions? Didn’t it know that was a waste of time? 

Tom puffed another sigh and, grumbling low in his throat, he kept an eye out as he traversed the alley, letting residual fear drain away in lieu of cataloging minute changes and noting the people he passed as he cut a path across each layer upon layer of grime that led the way to Borgin and Burkes. He’d only come to the alley to check up on that stupid locket Burke was dangling over his head, not get felt up and doom himself to a sleepless night of hopeless anxiety and seething hatred. If nothing else, hopefully he’d make some sort of progress today, but he sincerely doubted it. Fuck his life. 

As he passed by the teeming marketplace, which was riddled with filth as per the usual, he let his eyes rove over the crowd, seeing no out-of-place suspicious figures. No one with any knives glinting in the light, and no one looking at him funny. Good. Hopefully it’d stay that way. As Borgin and Burke’s grew nearer and nearer, Tom did his best to uncurl his lip and soften his face from it’s regular surly state, less for the sake of the wary people around him and more as a preemptive measure to get into Burke’s arbitrary good graces. And then― 

“Did I tell ya about the kid that showed up at Hogwarts the other week?” Tom stopped dead as he heard it, and quickly sidestepped behind a nearby wall to listen in without looking strange. 

A flash of irritation and something _far_ too close to jealousy skittered through Tom’s chest. Which lucky bastard was lounging at the school and not bearing the daily bullshit of everyone else?

“No, you’ve not,” Another scraggly voice complained. “Who is it?”

“Dunno. Just some spritely little green-eyed fellow. Found ‘im not too long ago, poor thing was facedown in the dirt. I figured he was some sort of wayward muggle, but I was chatting with Romona at the Hog’s Head the other day ‘nd she told me he was one ‘o us, ‘nd that she reckons he got jumped by Grindelwald. Got to worryin’ he was dead, but I saw ‘im wadin’ in the lake with Romona and Aberforth’s brother b’fore I left just today. Good on ‘im.” 

Tom peeked around the corner to see who was talking and then ducked his head back around just as quickly. It was the Gamekeeper Ogg speaking―and if the man saw him here, he’d squeal to Dumbledore and Tom would be put under even _more_ of a magnifying glass than usual. _Dammit_. 

“I’d be more worried about if Grindelwald PUT him there, like a spy or sumthin,” 

Tom rolled his eyes. 

The same voice said after a pause, “Ever hear his name, though?”

“Oh, just some nobody―Henry Evans or someother. Actually, I dunno if it was Henry. It did start with an H though.”

“Hayden? Harper? Holden? Hogan? Harry? Hudso―-”

“Harry! It was Harry, yeah. Harry Evans.”

As if the name itself were a spell, Tom’s stomach dropped out and his heart stopped. There was no reason for it, none that he could discern, but just the name alone had sent his nerves buzzing. 

“Harry Evans,” He mumbled under his breath, and as footsteps crept towards him, he jerked off the wall and walked calmly as though his mind were not whirling. 

_Who is Harry Evans?_

It was only when he was out of the alley and halfway through the Leaky Cauldron that Tom realized he’d forgotten all about his locket.

* * *

_'As fast as a speeding building can leap over bullets, with kevlar shoes,'_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Harry, litty titty: okay so picture this, u just fell like, a bajillion feet, its slimy, there's rocks everywhre, nd uhhh theres this HOT dude.  
> Goswood, chin on palm: Uh huh.  
> Harry: LIKE. H O T. He's SEXY he's the subject of ur guilty wet dreams but he ALSO KILLED UR PARENTS  
> Goswood: Oh, did he now?  
> Harry: YA-HUH, but yu dont KNOW that yet. so he's talking at u, monologuing like a disney villain but ur still caught up in how long and white his neck is  
> Goswood, fixing his pillows: Makes sense, makes sense.  
> Harry: and then he tries to kill ur best friend's sister to absorb her soul bcus it turns out hes DEAD and also can talk to snakes.  
> Goswood: Ooh, very scary.  
> Harry: NOT as scary as when his huge fucking Basilisk bit me, LOOKIT.  
> Goswood, looking at his arm scar:  
> Goswood: Wh--


	7. Interlude I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Arthur centric. What the fuck's happening in Harry's absence?

Harry had been missing for three days. 

Tracking spells weren’t working, either. 

It was well and truly established now; he was not hiding in a little alcove somewhere, nor was he just miraculously avoiding authority figures by complete accident. Harry was _gone._ This in and of itself was a terrifying realization, especially given the state of affairs in magical britain right now, but what made it even worse was this―the complete and utter lack of clues. 

No one knew a _god_ damn thing. It was uncanny, just as much as it was unnerving. The only established facts were these; Harry had gone to the dungeons. He left an hour later, looking scared, disoriented, and had run upstairs with reckless abandon. He’d gone into the Gryffindor common room. He ran upstairs to his dorm room and locked the door. Minutes later, when Professor Minerva McGonagall had gone inside to check on him, his wand, his trunk, and Harry himself had vanished. And the trail was cold from there. 

Arthur was trying his hardest not to dwell on these facts. If he did, he’d need his friend, Matthew Cork, to go find him another paper bag, and he’d already blown the bottom out of three of them before Severus had finally gotten the wits to force a Calming Draught into Arthur’s hand. He couldn’t afford a meltdown right now― _someone_ needed to keep a level head here, because everyone else―especially his wife―was in their own special state of hysteria and that _really_ wasn’t conducive to search efforts. Harry needed to be found, and _fast._ Destroying a fourth paper bag would not make that happen.

So. Three days. Three sleepless nights, three mornings of staring at the pale, drawn faces of his other children, and now, his third visit to Hogwarts to look for clues. Matthew had come along this time―Arthur was nearly certain it was at the behest of his wife, but he couldn’t prove it. Whatever the reason really was, Arthur was grudgingly glad that his friend had come along. It was good to have another set of eyes. He ignored the solemn headshakes from some of the Professors he passed, and asked around, hoping that someone might have something different to proffer. But it was all the same. He went to the dungeons. He came out an hour later. He was running, he looked scared, and he didn’t look okay. He went upstairs. He went to his dorm. Nobody knows how he left.

It was as clear as it had been before―the last place Harry had been seen was going up to his dorm room. The room had been untouched since Harry’s disappearance had finally been acknowledged, being treated as a “crime scene” by the aurors. Nothing was to be disturbed, but Arthur didn’t care about that―it’d already been rifled through a handful of times, and every effort had been fruitless. If the professional-mcfessional aurors couldn’t find squat, his interference would make no difference.

And make no difference it did, because despite every attempt he made, Arthur found nothing. Not even bare contents of Harry’s trunk, for God’s sake. Like he’d mentioned before, the trunk itself had been missing since the day he’d vanished, which had several different implications. But it didn’t matter, because it didn’t help― _nothing_ was helping. 

“Arthur,” Matthew called softly after Arthur had picked up the same sock for the third time. “I know you’re doing the best you can, but you can only do better if you get some rest.” He was starting to sound eerily like his wife, which further affirmed his theory that it had been her idea for Matt to come with him this time. “Why don’t we call it quits for now, and we can come back to this in the morning?” 

Arthur stared down at the blue sock in his hand, as if doing so would give him the answers he so desperately needed. “What if it’s too late by then?” He said, sounding much more hoarse than he thought he would.

Matthew didn’t say anything, not at first. He approached Arthur slowly, as if he were a wounded animal, and then said softly, but much more firmly than the length of his pause had implied, “It won’t be.”

“You don’t _know_ that,” Arthur whipped around quickly, chest stuttering as his voice pitched dangerously. “ _No one_ knows that, and I―I _need_ to find something, Matthew, I _need_ to find something―”

Matthew put his hand on Arthur’s shoulder, and it was only then that he realized he was trembling. They stared at each other for a tense moment, and Arthur turned away first, trying to hide the wetness starting to burn his eyes.

“...Five more minutes, okay? Then I’m taking you home.”

Arthur sighed harshly, running a hand through his balding hair for the umpteenth time and shivered in the cold, not deigning it necessary to answer that. Matthew’s hand left his shoulder after another long second, and as the man went to go sink into one of the nearby chairs with a groan and Arthur slumped. He hadn’t been exaggerating, nor had he been dramatic. Arthur _needed_ to find something, any sort of clue, or he’d―well. He didn’t know _what_ he’d do. All that he _did_ know was that he couldn’t bear this much longer. He just couldn’t. 

Cold air swirled into the dorm room, whistling faintly through the open window, and Arthur flinched a bit belatedly when the curtain brushed past his stubbly cheek. He turned towards the window, where he could see the wispy clouds circling up above in the sky, and sighed. Another gust of frigid wind came, and sent a shiver rattling down Arthur’s back. He went to stand up from the floor. Someone really should have shut the window by now. He couldn’t think of anyone in their right mind who would’ve opened it in the first place since it was so damn cold, especially with the threat of snow on the horizon. What had they been thinking?

Something occurred to Arthur, then. He stopped.

...What _had_ they been thinking? Surely an auror wouldn’t have cracked it for air―it wasn’t stuffy in here, and the exposure could damage evidence. And one of the other boys wouldn’t have, they would have no reason. Not in this weather. But...

“No one in their right mind…” Arthur repeated to himself softly, heart thudding in his chest. 

“Arthur?” Matthew called from across the room, seeming to pick up on the sudden, odd energy about the man, but Arthur ignored him as he sprang fully to his feet and turned towards the open window.

The accounts had all been the same. 

Harry had raced through the castle, coming from the dungeons, looking very scared and stressed. He hadn’t seemed aware of anything, ploughing into anyone in his way without so much as an ‘excuse me,’ and the windows in Gryffindor Tower had rattled when he shut the door to his dorm. And when Minerva had gone up to check on him, Harry was gone. _Harry,_ for all rights and purposes, hadn’t been in his right mind. Arthur stared out of the open window, barely daring to draw in breath. It was ludicrous. It was ridiculous _._ It was _stupid_.

But could it be that…?

Arthur nearly laughed out loud, and with no small amount of hysteria, because yes, it _was_ ludicrous, just as much as it was ridiculous and stupid. Because just as much as it was ludicrous, ridiculous, and stupid, it was also _just_ the kind of thing Harry would do. Harry most certainly _would've_ jumped out the window. But if he’d done such a thing, his body _surely_ would’ve left a hole in the snow, right? Arthur’s stomach lurched, sickened by the thought, but as he hoisted his upper half over the windowsill and looked down, the snow below looked just as pristine as always. No hint of an impact.

“Jesus Christ, Arthur, get back a little or you’re going to fall―!”

Arthur was certain of it now. 

“―He _jumped,_ Matthew.”

“... _What?”_

Arthur looked over Matthew’s baffled face, and insisted again, “Matthew, he _jumped._ Harry wasn’t in the room when Minerva got in here, but everyone saw him come up. No one _knows_ how he left, but _someone,”_ Arthur gestured towards it, “opened this window in this weather. It was Harry. He _jumped.”_

Matthew paused for a while, the baffled expression not leaving his face, not at first, but slowly, surely, it began to thaw as he stared out the window. 

“Why _else_ would this window have been open?”

Matthew began to shake his head slowly, “Then...then he’s _dead._ Arthur, you don’t know what you’re saying, no one could survive a fall like that―” 

And this was true, and maybe Arthur worried for a moment, but he discarded the idea quickly. Because Matthew had missed a vital piece; no one _without_ _magic_ could have survived that fall, and Harry was most certainly _not_ without it. It began to dawn on Arthur, then, just what Harry might’ve done, because that was just the problem: Harry had magic. And Harry wasn't stupid, he was _crazy_. And if you were crazy, and you had magic...well. Arthur began to pace. 

“Harry...he’s so clever with charms, just like his mother.” And he had a certain knack for flight, given just how at-home he seemed on a broom. A ‘Peter Pan’ move was far too absurd, even for Harry’s standards, but something _similar..._ Harry wouldn’t have flown, but he could’ve gone down _slowly._ “Harry must’ve had his wand, Matthew. No one’s been able to find it. And I know that he knows the Featherlight charm. If he cast it, then jumped, he would’ve floated to the bottom. He wouldn’t have even made dents in the snow.” 

Matthew stared at Arthur for a very long time, but then began to nod. “Okay. Okay. That makes sense. But _why?_ Why―Wh―What the hell would be _so_ important that he’d have to grab his shit and go?”

And wasn’t that the thousand galleon question? _Why?_ Why _had_ Harry gone to such drastic measures? Why was it so important to _escape?_ What had he seen in the dungeons that had spooked him so badly that he _needed_ to get away?

It all started to come together.

Harry had always been...very _guarded,_ for the lack of a better description. Not wary, because that implied cowardice, but guarded, yes. He kept his secrets, his wants, his needs, his _everything_ close to his chest, and done so with such firmness that it’d take nothing short of three cauldrons of veritaserum to send it all spilling out. 

But.

He’d been learning Occlumency with Snape for a while now, through what Arthur could understand as an _intensely_ violating teaching method. 

Snape taught in the dungeons. 

And Harry had run from there the day he vanished.

Looking stressed and scared. 

Arthur looked back towards Cork, peering through the glare of the daylight at his friend’s face. “Something scared him. Something scared him _bad,_ and he needed to get away. And I know what it probably was, but I can’t tell you.”

 _‘Snape must’ve seen something,’_ Arthur thought wildly as he turned back towards the window, as if the horizon could reveal another clue. _‘Snape must’ve seen something_ _hard_ _.’_ But _what?_ What could it have been? It had to be something _big,_ because Harry was tough. He had a temper, but when push came to shove he always rose to the occasion. He only ran from his problems when they were big, not from fear, not from cowardice, but from a need for control. A need for _distance._

“Distance. Where would Harry go if he wanted distance?” Arthur murmured under his breath.

He craned his neck to look even further outside the window, teeth clattering together when a cold gust of air whistled past his face with enough chill to make his ears hurt. He squinted through the dreary, open air. 

“He wanted to get away. Anywhere in Hogwarts is out―Harry would go further. But somewhere _safe._ Somewhere nearby, not Hogwarts, but safe. Where the hell would that be?” Arthur turned and called over his shoulder. 

“Hogsmeade?” Matthew said back as if it were obvious, and of course, it _was,_ but―

 _“Where_ in Hogsmeade? It’s chock full of people. And they would’ve seen him and outed him by now. He’s not smart enough to think better of running away, but he _is_ smart enough to do it right. He wouldn’t stay near people, that’s too risky, so he’d _have_ to be somewhere _isolated_ in Hogsmeade. Somewhere like…”

Arthur turned to peer back outside, and as if pulled by a magnet, his eyes came to rest upon the Whomping Willow. 

That was when he remembered, quite suddenly, Sirius’s story about dragging Ron by the leg through a tunnel...under the _Whomping Willow..._ to the most isolated place in Hogsmeade.

The Shrieking Shack. 

“Oh my god,” Arthur whispered, voice lost in the howling wind. “He was going to the Shrieking Shack.”

“What?”

The realization washed over Arthur like a bucket of ice, and he hoisted his body a little further out the window, frantically scanning the snow surrounding the base of the tree, desperate for any sign of disturbment in it. Even from here, though, he could see it was pristine. Untouched. His heart sank briefly, but just as it did, he realized the tree was hiding a _tunnel._ And if he remembered just where Hogsmeade was positioned correctly...that tunnel _had_ to be right beneath the Forbidden Forest. 

_“I know you have a history of tromping around in there, so I’m telling you now, do_ _not_ _go back in there.”_

Arthur huffed a sharp, almost desperate sigh. Not only was Harry disobedient in nature, but he was annoyingly clever at times. And sometimes, for the sake of not taking years off of the lives of the people that loved him, those qualities paired very poorly with his good sense of direction. So surely, _surely_ it wasn’t outside the realms of possibility that Harry had...followed the tunnel _over_ ground, with the Featherlight Charm still preventing him from leaving tracks, knowing that he’d be caught out if he disturbed the snow by the Whomping Willow. 

“Damn you, you clever boy.”

Arthur pulled himself away from the window with a bit of help from Matthew, and after several beats of tense silence, Arthur looked his friend in the face and said plainly, “Put back on your coat. We’re going into the Forbidden Forest.”

“Jesus Christ.” 

And that was that. Off they went, racing towards the forest. The two of them just barely missed McGonagall as they darted past, unaware that she was looking for them. It didn’t matter, then. Arthur filled Matthew in about his theory over his shoulder as they went, trudging through the snow as fast as they could. 

“Arthur, if you think he’s in the Shrieking Shack, why don’t we just get there the _normal_ way?” Matthew panted once they got near the Whomping Willow, sitting heavily down on a snow-covered rock just far enough to not get hit by it. 

“I don’t know if he _got_ there, and if that’s where he meant to go, through there,” Arthur pointed through the trees, “is where he’d travel.”

“Because he’s fucking crazy.”

“Yes―no―” Arthur shook his head, “―Debatable. Whatever―point is, that’s where I’m going. I would appreciate company.”

“You’re damn lucky my leg’s not still fucked from the full moon on the 4th,” Matthew grumbled, which was a very long way of saying ‘ugh, fine’. “Do you know where the tunnel is pointing?”

Er.

“...No. Hold on, if I levitate a rock over the knot over there, the tree’ll freeze.” At least, Arthur sure _hoped_ so. He was pretty sure that was what Remus had said. “Can you poke your head down there and look?” He asked sheepishly.

Matthew looked very annoyed. “How spiry do you think I _am?”_ But he did it anyway, and thankfully, by the time he got down and out, he’d only gotten smacked once by the tree. He looked very perturbed upon coming out, and pointed towards the woods. “We’re going that way.” He said. 

And that way they went, examining their surroundings as they went, searching under every snow drift for the barest hint of a clue.

“If I’d known that being your friend would entail tromping through three damn feet of snow, I’m not sure I would’ve talked to you so much back at Mungo’s.” Matthew grouched somewhere between treating his third set of icicles with individual scrutiny.

Arthur didn’t dignify that with a response other than a half-exasperated eye roll. 

“And didn’t you tell your kid specifically not to go in here? He seemed like a little rule-follower.”

“Then clearly, you’ve never met Harry.” Arthur tossed over his shoulder, drying the melted snow off his trouser legs for the umpteenth time. “He _has_ to have gone this way.”

Arthur knew Harry had to have come through here. He couldn’t explain it―he just...he _knew_. It was just...rapidly proving a bit problematic to justify this search, though, because Arthur had nothing to back him up on his certainty—there were no footprints in the snow to speak of, and it hadn’t snowed since the day Harry had gone AWOL. If Harry had come through here, the footprints would be conspicuous. And there weren’t any. But Arthur knew, dammit. So, he trudged through the ice, eyeing the centaurs nervously whenever they came near, and kept his ears perked for the advance of acromantulas. 

He overturned every leaf, rifled through every disturbed patch of snow, flipped over every rock, checked every tree hollow, and looked at each icicle with individual scrutiny, all in search of some sort of clue of Harry’s whereabouts. Arthur was going to find his son, dammit, and once he did and he was going to drag him home by his ear, propriety be damned. 

But as time passed, and not a single clue was found, nor the barest indent of snow that could denote some sort of track, Arthur began to grow anxious. Not that he wasn’t before, but this was crossing a new threshold, the likes of which Arthur hadn’t known existed. The seconds stretched longer, a snowstorm loomed ever closer on the horizon, his searching began to grow more frantic…and Arthur found nothing upon even more nothing.

The only thing that changed was how the centaurs edged ever nearer. 

Arthur avoided them the best he could, but as seconds turned into minutes, and minutes turned into hours, he could no longer ignore the crackle of their hooves on the snow, and the eyes that followed him. They seemed...Arthur didn’t want to say nervous, but it was the only appropriate descriptor. They seemed to dog (...or horse, he supposed) his every step, watching with a strange anxiousness to them—he could see it in the tenseness of their jaws, the firm line of their shoulders. Arthur found himself wondering just what it was that they were waiting for. Their behavior was unnerving, and there were many times he considered asking them for help, if not, just what they wanted, but he knew it’d be a wasted effort. He just navigated around them, and kept looking. 

It was only when Matthew approached him with a look on his face that said before he could do it with his words, “We need to stop and head back”, that Arthur saw it. 

“Look,” He said, pointing. 

There were indents in the snow.

Matthew froze, and then turned slowly to see where, exactly, Arthur was pointing. 

“Oh my god,” Matthew said, and that was all Arthur heard from him, because moments later Arthur was _running_ towards them. 

Sure enough, they were tracks, they were _tracks._ Heart pounding wildly in his chest, Arthur followed them quickly, hoping against hope, praying against prayer that they might just lead him to his son. 

“Arthur, these tracks aren’t on the tunnel anymore―”

―And they weren’t, they _weren’t,_ which made Arthur’s insistence upon going through the woods even more of a good idea. He barely noticed the centaurs cantering nearby as he tripped and skidded through the snow, following each and every track before him. Minutes crept by and Arthur was soaked from the knee down, but he didn’t care at all. This was _it,_ this was the clue he’d been _waiting for―_

And that was where the tracks ended.

Right before a great, big, looming wall of black thorns. 

Arthur stopped dead before it, his path through the snow halting with him. He stared at the hulking wall of bramble before him, utterly uncomprehending for a long, long moment.

“Harry?” Arthur called through the great wall of thorns before him, unable to keep a note of desperation out of his tone. “HARRY?!” 

His voice echoed strangely throughout the forest, No response came. 

“What the…” Matthew cantered to a stop behind Arthur moments later. 

“The tracks stop here.” Arthur said numbly, staring down at the end of the path Harry had created for them. 

He watched the tracks disappear beneath the thorns before him, and began to slowly, disbelievingly shake his head. The wall was so thick, there was no way―not even someone as small as Harry could’ve possibly―

“I was so…” He drew in a breath. Then another. And another. And still, no understanding sunk in. It didn’t make sense. It didn’t make any _sense._

“...Arthur.” 

The man in question stood still for just a moment longer, and then he jerked, like a rear-ended car, and stumbled towards the briar. There had to be _something,_ dammit, there was _no reason_ the tracks should end there―there _had_ to be something past the―Arthur took a protruding branch into his hand and _pulled._ It didn’t give, not even slightly, and he shook his head as if it could change the inevitable truth. 

“ _Bombarda!”_ He cried, throwing his hand towards the branches. A blinding flash of light drenched the area, and Matthew cried in alarm. The thorns did not move. “ _Bombarda Maxima!”_ another crash, another failure. 

“ _Arthur―!”_

 _“Confringo―! Deprimo―! Expulso―! Defodio―! Reducto―!”_ Left and right, Arthur sent destructive spell after spell at the bramble, and nothing was _working― “Diffindo―! Incendio―! Relashio―Re―Revelio―!”_ He cried, and when it became clear that nothing was _working,_ he began to pull on the thorns with all the strength he possessed, as if his will, as if his desperation alone would ever be enough. 

The thorns bit into his hands, tearing the flesh into strips, but Arthur didn’t notice― _couldn’t_ notice. Blood gushed onto the snow at his feet―and Matthew was trying to yank him backwards, yelling into his ear―and Arthur was yelling too, _screaming,_ even, _give him back, goddamn you, give me back my_ **_son―_ ** _where is he, what did you do with him you godforsaken lumps of wood, how dare you, how dare you―_

It was a bit of a blur from there. Something had come to a head in the woods around then, and Arthur was barely upright by the time he and Matthew finally emerged from the forest, held up almost entirely through the latter’s strength. They had not spoken a word. Not for awhile. The bandages on Arthur’s hands itched. 

If either of them were hoping for peace, then, they would not get it. Just bare moments after they stepped foot into the Great Hall, with Matthew muttering something about getting them both some soup, Minerva McGonagall came crashing through the hall.

And she made a beeline straight for him.

Arthur’s stomach _dropped._

He turned away, as if it could forestall her advance, and he flinched when she seized his hand. His palm stung fiercely in her hold. 

Panting, she said, “Arthur, you need to come with me _now.”_

He turned slowly to look at her, hardly understanding how or _why_ she was there.

Matthew began to say, “Minerva, this isn’t―”

Minerva’s wrinkled hand tightened ever so slightly, and Arthur took in the whiteness of her face, and how...how _horrifically_ scared she looked. 

“No,” He shook his head slowly. 

“Arthur,” She whispered insistently. “The wards. At,” Her eyes flickered to the curious inhabitants of the Great Hall, and she muttered in a shaky undertone, “The ones at Privet Drive. Arthur, they’re _gone.”_

Snow began to fall, visible through the ceiling up above, and fear colder than it washed through him. 

_“No.”_

* * *

There had been a meeting, Arthur was sure of it, but he could remember nothing from it. Molly had clutched his hand the whole time while his second-youngest son screamed outside the door, and everyone had been so obsessed with the _implications_ of the wards falling at Privet Drive and no one had cared about _Harry,_ just what he represented, and Arthur had felt so sick so he’d―he’d left. It was in a strange, numb sort of way that Arthur approached Number Four Privet Drive. What was left of it, that was.

The grass crackled beneath his feet as he plodded across the lawn, uncaring of the impropriety of doing so. He wasn't concerned with that now―couldn't be. He could barely muster the ability to breathe anymore. It wasn't an ideation of death that inspired this: between the weight of the shell-shocked incomprehension that everything pointed to the loss of his youngest son and the stench of ash and burning foliage, he could hardly draw in a lungful. The loss and the smoke sat too heavily in his lungs.

All he could do was tromp forward and hope against hope that he'd find anything, _anything_ in this god forsaken house that could possibly turn the inevitable truth up on it's head. That Harry was dead.

Muggles milled about just mere paces behind him as he stopped before the door, staring at it as if it could move by its own volition. He could hear teenagers behind him, smacking bubblegum loudly and complaining about their parents, completely, blissfully ignorant of the mass of molten metal and charred wood that Arthur stood before now. He sucked in a harsh breath through his teeth, and twisted the doorknob.

And he hadn't even had to do that―just the bare prod of his fingertips sent the door listlessly crashing to the ground with a resounding bang, the mail slot sent flying upwards and the blackened window-glass shattering on the warped tile. He looked down at the ashen shards skittering across the floor blankly, focusing instead on the cursing he could hear from inside.

Apparently, the Ministry hadn't finished clean-up yet.

Some no-name Auror, a small part of The Order that he'd yet to meet, came bounding in, wand at the ready. Arthur looked her up and down slowly, and settled on looking at her nose instead of her eyes, if only so she'd not notice the redness around his own.

"Mr. Weasley," She said after a moment, rather breathless. "Wasn't expecting..."

"My dearest ambition is to find out how aeroplanes work," He said dully, watching her cheeks go a little ruddy, and barely listened when she returned her own code.

"What are you doing here?" She asked in the wake of his silence, still looking rather flustered, and wasn't that just the question of the year?

"The wards fell." He said.

She nodded slowly. "...Yes, they did."

"They were tied to Harry." She was still looking at him expectantly, and the words clogged his throat, threatening to choke the air straight out of his lungs.

She was going to make him say it, wasn’t she? It wasn't a difficult leap, but she wasn't about to take it, so, heart hardening into something unrecognizable in his chest, Arthur said, voice strained and frigid even to himself,

"My son is dead."

And that made it real.

Saying it.

A paralyzing sort of pain spread through his body like icy, liquid metal the moment he uttered the words. Her face slackened but he didn't care about it, nor her placating words, "We don't know that, yet."

As if they didn't. As if they _fucking_ didn't.

Why _else_ would the wards have fallen? Why _else_ would Death Eaters be going on a frenzied rampage? Why _else_ would the tracking spells everyone had been casting not work? Harry was dead―he was _fucking dead,_ and there hadn't been a goddamned thing Arthur could've done to stop it.

She eventually left him be, warning him to be careful, and he clenched his fists as he hesitantly took each small step, trying not to notice the way his feet trembled on the gritty floor. His legs twitched and his throat closed. He sucked in a breath as slowly as he could, and hated every single thing about how it trembled in his throat. His jaw tightened, the static burned his ears, and his eyes stung like someone had spat fire into them. Slowly, his brain picked up his feet in an unbalanced gait, more weight piling onto them with every harrowing step. Reality tapped its way into his brain's marching rhythm.

And he walked.

That was when he saw it. The door. Just an innocuous, yellowed, tiny door, with strange locks drilled into it and a grimy grate. A wash of foreboding swept through him, and Arthur stopped to ponder it for a moment. Something welled up in his chest, and he shoved it down, intent on looking at anything besides the door.

Surely there wasn't anything notable about a cupboard under the stairs.

But despite the thought, the awful, ringing silence in the wreckage of Number 4 Privet Drive made the tiny door beneath the stairs stick out to him. He...had a _feeling._ A strange, gnawing sort of feeling. Somehow, somewhere inside, Arthur knew he _had_ to look. So slowly, shakily, Arthur crouched with some modicum of difficulty, used his wand to unlock the locks, and pushed the door open.

Nothing stood out at first, not while he was outside of it. He peered around in the blackness, and caught the gleam of a lightbulb swaying in the dark. He reached out and fumbled with it, and while he got it on, he touched something warm and hairy in the process. He yelped, reeling backwards, and shook his hand out frantically just to send what looked like a tarantula flying across the house, thudding into a distant wall with an audible thump.

He stared at where it had been flung for a long moment, breathing heavily and trying to calm his heart. Holy _shit._ He was suddenly, viscerally glad that his fear for spiders was nowhere near the level of Ron's, because if that were the case, the experience could've done him in. He almost laughed. Almost. But every remnant of amusement vanished with the grace of a deflating balloon the second he finally, finally looked inside.

His breath caught in his throat as he took it in, and for a blessed moment, what on earth he was looking at didn’t sink in. 

But then, his ears began to ring and his heart pounded as he numbly took in the crayon drawings on the walls. Lopsided flowers, glaring suns, burning rockets, bottlebrush trees, rickety stick people, random scribbles of blues, greens, and yellows. And this would’ve been innocuous, something to dismiss as a naughty child using the wrong canvas, but there was one thing he knew, and one thing laid out before him that clued Arthur in on the inevitable truth.

Because in the middle.

In the middle.

The epicentre of it all, there was written, with backwards R's.

Arthur's heart _stopped._

He stared into the cupboard for a long, long time.

For any other kid, for _any_ other kid he was sure he could brush it off, dismiss it as a fort and smile, but he _knew_ Harry. He remembered, suddenly, how when the boy was twelve Arthur had cracked a joke about the smallness of Ron’s room and he’d said with a shrug, “I’ve had smaller.” And he looked at all four walls, and he understood for the first time what Harry had truly meant. An unimaginable, unavoidable horror rose up inside of him as he examined each and every drawing. He watched in revulsion as they got more and more sophisticated, more steady, more practiced. He placed a hand down onto the tough, wiry carpet inside, and the moment his palm hit the ground, he could _feel_ it. Misery was etched it all into every fibre of the carpet, every crack in the wall, every single stroke of crayon. Arthur _felt_ it deep inside, the truth of it sinking straight into the marrow of his bones. Every moment he spent between all four walls _howled_ terror, desperation, and a teeth-aching, inescapable _loneliness._ The hairs on the back of his neck raised with the force of it all.

Magical paintings were a form of memories and feelings, he recalled. An imprint of a time long lost. And the walls were _covered_ in them. The splashes of blue, green, red, yellow, black, purple, and pink were screaming every memory into his ears. 

“ _We’re sorry. We’re sorry. We’re so sorry.”_

He began to tremble.

An impossible, dull ache lodged deep in his chest, and he felt a tear slip down his cheek. A building pressure rose behind his ribs and he tried to muster a sob to alleviate it, but he couldn't do it. This was too much. This was just too _much._ He’d finally hit the limit, it seemed. The limit on just how much he could take. Nothing was okay anymore, and there was nothing that could make it okay. The tears kept coming, but there was nothing else behind them, just a wavering _shake_ within that he couldn’t circumvent. And he hated it―he hated everything about the entire situation so much and so strongly that he felt like he was about to choke.

He heard himself make a sound, a tiny sound. It wasn’t the kind of sound that boggled the mind with its intensity―it was the sort that was condensed in the most insidious sort of way, the kind that rived the very soul and spat on it’s shreds. He made the only sort of sound that could possibly, _possibly_ give justice to this unfathomable anguish threatening to swallow him right where he sat, the injustice simmering inside of him, and the fury mounting within.

"I'm glad he killed you." He said into the empty house, voice trembling, and he meant it.

He could feel the sweat drenching his skin, the throbbing in his chest, and a strange, ringing scream in his ears as he stood, heartbeat thundering. His tears dried. They boiled away as something hot and horrible lodged deep in his chest. His fingers curled into a fist, nails digging into his palm. He couldn't hear his rapid breathing, but he could feel the oxygen flooding in and out of his lungs, and he wished that he was angrier. He wished he had it inside of him to kick and scream, to throw shit and _yell_ , and he wished the walls were still smoldering and that his feet were sticking to the floor. He wished that there was anything, anything at all that could express the horror inside of him.

He took one last, savage look into _Harry's Room,_ and disapparated with a crack.

His feet dug into the moist dirt by the Gates of Hogwarts and he sent them flying open with a wave of his hand, nerves abuzz and eyes burning.

He paid no mind to the students as he marched across the lawn, cloak billowing behind him, and he did not stop to apologize when he knocked shoulders with a seventh year, too dead-set on his destination. He tore up the stairs, knees screaming in protest, and by the time he stood before the Stone Gargoyle he _snarled_ the password, the word "sugar quill" tasting poisonous on his tongue.

Albus was serenely inking away at papers when he came crashing inside. They sat in silence for a moment, and Arthur's chest heaved―he could've reached over, in that very moment, and strangled the man with his own beard. He reigned in his anger just enough to say, to the man's questioning, twinkling gaze, 

"Acceptance letters to Hogwarts. You have copies of them. _All_ of them. Give me Harry's."

Albus blinked, unperturbed by his tone, and asked calmly, "Whyever would you need that?" 

Because he needed to know. He needed to know the _truth,_ and it would lie on the letters. 

"Give me the fucking letters, Albus, _right now."_

And that got a reaction―a slight slackening of his face, a crease between the eyebrows. "Arthur?"

"Get. The _goddamn._ Letters."

The portraits up above began to mutter and hiss, complaining about the _audacity_ of him, and he ignored them. Amid the buzzing of the office, with an agonizingly slow pace, Albus drifted across the room and bent waist-deep into a cabinet, rooting around the parchment inside. Barely refraining from trembling, Arthur set his jaw, and by the time Albus came over with a hearty stack of letters―all with different addresses―he all but snatched them out of his wizened hand.

"Mr H. Potter, The Floor, Hut-on-the-Rock, The Sea." read one of them. 

"Mr H. Potter, Room 17, Railview Hotel, Cokeworth" read another. 

"Mr H. Potter, The Smallest Bedroom, 4 Privet Drive." read the third.

And on the last.

On the first letter that had been sent.

Mr H. Potter. The Cupboard Under the Stairs, 4 Privet Drive.

Arthur stared at the words for a very long time. Not a single thought crossed his mind, not for a while. He read the words over and over again. 

The Cupboard Under the Stairs― 

―The Cupboard Under the Stairs― 

―The Cupboard Under the Stairs―

―The _Cupboard Under the―_

The emotion that had washed over Arthur then was so indescribably overwhelming and jarring that no string of words would ever be suitable enough to convey it. Nothing could possibly give justice to the sheer, cold fury thrumming throughout his whole body. It was a vice grip around his heart, a distortion of his very soul. What he felt was no longer human; it couldn't be. It burned too much like fire, the way it laced his veins and crept up his spine, the desire to do nothing but hate. The acidity of it all churned inside of his gut, and he inhaled shakily.

"You said he was safe." He said tightly, quietly. "With them."

"Of course he was," Albus said, voice dismal and sad. "His aunt's home was the safest place for him to be, with the love her blood kept alive. It's a terrible tragedy that it wasn't enough to keep him with us, Arthur. I'm so sorry."

And that. That struck something in him. That struck him hard. 

Because Albus wasn't sorry. 

He wasn't sorry at _all_ and Arthur damn well knew it. His chest fell in on itself as he felt his blood rise into his face, suddenly remembering Harry’s broken ankle from years ago, and how he’d not breathed a word of it. He remembered how _quiet_ he was about pain, about being sick. He remembered the shake in Harry’s hands whenever Molly raised her voice, he remembered the awful, awful smallness of Harry’s frame, and the way his eyes would dim in the strangest ways at the softest moments, and now he thought about the cupboard under the stairs, about _Harry’s Room,_ and knew with utter fucking certainty that there was no _goddamn_ way Albus could’ve missed it. He _had_ to have known, and he had to have let it _go,_ thinking the power of love would save Harry in the end.

Love meant _nothing_ if you were a corpse in a cupboard.

"Safe?" He said finally, voice faint and disbelieving. His breath came harder. " _Safe?"_

Hand shaking so fiercely that it was a miracle that he didn't drop it, he held up "The Cupboard Under the Stairs" to Albus's eyes, and watched the color wash out of the man's face.

“He’s been dead all this time, hasn’t he?” He said quietly, dangerously. He measured each word, and felt nothing as they came out. Nothing but a deep-seated, boiling _hatred._ “He died _years_ ago when they left him to rot _in the cupboard under the stairs_ **_..._ ** and you did _nothing._ ” The room rang with silence, and Arthur’s chest shook. “Because you _knew,_ didn’t you?”

Albus stood silently, eyes fixed on the letter for a moment too long. “Arthur,” He said.

And suddenly, that was the exact last thing he wanted to hear, that hushed, exhausted utterance of his own name. Arthur didn’t want to hear his _fucking name,_ he wanted his son back, and he wanted his son to have lived a good life, but it was all his fault, _all his fault—_

Arthur went home that night with blood on his fist.

* * *

_'And then take what you need to take, what's yours is mine, and then just give all you want of it to some new thing—I'll stay here, the provider of that constant sting they call love.'  
_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> man i cant even make a joke dialogue for this one. too sad.


	8. The Devil is Not as Dark

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tom is angry about his potato and life as a whole, Harry gets Sorted, we get some more Not Happy Foreshadowing about Tom, Harry is Immediately jumped by creepy shit in the dead of night, we learn WHY Hogwarts has a curfew, and uhhhhhhhhhh yknow what i'll let u find out the rest

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> when will my friend Aspen return from the war,,, :(

Tom sighed angrily into his bland baked potato, of which he’d nicked from the kitchen a scarce ten minutes ago while Mrs. Cole got distracted by That Man, of whom he would not bother to name. He wished he had a more... _comfortable_ place to eat this, but alas. This appeared to be the one place that no one would pester him. 

A cricket chittered lazily ahead, making a particularly long blade of grass bow underneath it's weight, and Tom leaned back as much as he reasonably could, only stopping once the back of his head thocked gently onto the slightly rotted, damp wood behind him. The bridge creaked overhead as he sat, crouched in a soft patch of grass, and he picked at the potato skin as he waited for it to cool down enough for him to eat without killing himself. It was just about there―and was currently doing a good job of warming his nose―but he still didn't quite trust it to be cool _enough_ yet. Perhaps another minute.

The cricket chittered once more, and Tom seized a slightly dirty rock and threw it at it on a whim, watching it skittered away through the underbrush in lazy disinterest. It was quiet now, save for the din of screaming children somewhere across the yard, but that was inescapable in a place like this. Ugh. Tom rubbed his drooping, red rimmed eyes, and laid the potato in his lap in disinterest. God, what a sight he would make to his... _acquaintances_ at school right now. Huddled under a damp bridge, with little ankle-biting children howling in the background, about to cram a potato into his mouth, all to avoid the―the _filth_ he had to suffer the presence of every summer. And he didn’t even have butter for the goddamn potato.

What was this? What was his life? Tom _had_ to be destined for something greater than this―this _embarrassment._ He knew it. He _had_ to know it, or― or...well. That didn't bear thinking about. He was going to get _out_ of this decrepit, grim orphanage, move AWAY from anywhere with stupid rationing―AWAY from any loud, slobbering children, and AWAY from the―

He hissed under his breath slightly when the bridge above him began to rattle.

It wouldn't do to attract any....unwanted attention right now. God forbid one of the kids come over and try to rope him into ANOTHER insufferable game of House, Hide n Seek, or―Tom wasn’t a god-fearing man, but for this, heaven help him― _Tag._ Tom was built to scheme and make people do his bidding, not―not _run._ What did these morons take him for? Some sort of pauper? No, thank you very much, he’s fine.

Tom winced when he suddenly jabbed the side of his own nail bed with a different one, having missed the potato skin he was mutilating. What the hell was he just thinking about? Ugh. Tom couldn't recall. If he couldn't recall it, it wasn't important, so...he turned his attention back to his potato. He glared down at it on his lap. No butter, no salt, no pepper, no cheese, _nothing_ to make this even slightly more bearable to choke down. But it was sustenance, and if he ate it he could reasonably beg off dinner with all the kids without jeopardizing his health, so it'd have to do.

Stupid body functions. Useless, useless body functions. 

He tore off a chunk of the potato with his fingers and raised it to his lips, not diminishing himself enough to tear off a chunk with his teeth like a barbarian. Yes, Tom was eating a potato under a bridge with the ghost of a cricket for company, but he still had standards, dammit. As he ate and tried to ignore how the potato tasted little better than cud in his mouth, he tried to review the last week. What had he accomplished? 

Well, he'd stacked up the bowls outside of Mrs. Cole's bedroom door to piss her off first thing in the morning a couple days ago. It had been enough to make her yell at the kids and scare them, and as a consequence, they’d been particularly unruly that day and ruined hers. Big victory there. Otherwise...he'd dumped salt into That Man's tea on multiple occasions, he got a good shove in on Harley as retribution for making a dumb joke at Tom's expense (nothing went unpunished), he got Addison and Mary to have another catfight again, and given the stray cat that lurked outside the orphanage a good kick this morning. All in all, he'd made a good few entities experience annoyances this week, so, he'd count it as productive.

But despite that, he still had made zero progress on his locket, which had also been derailed earlier by...

That's right. 

Harry Evans.

The cricket began to chirp again, apparently no longer scared of rocks. Tom narrowed his eyes consideringly at it, trying not to wince when he crammed another bland potato lump into his mouth. Harry Evans. He mentally traced back to when he'd gotten his first Feeling about him, because that was all Tom could describe it to be. A feeling. Tom didn't know how or why, but since sometime before the end of fourth year, some peculiar… feelings… had washed over him for a reason he could never discern up until it had all come to a head _today_. And, most strangely, it had happened the moment he’d heard the name ‘Harry Evans’ in full. Even now, the thought of it had him tremoring strangely.

The cricket began to chitter in earnest and Tom kept his eyes trained on it, as if it could offer him counsel. Yes...reason stood to say that somehow, someway, for some reason, someone named Harry Evans was screwing with him, making him feel this...this... _odd,_ empty feeling. Like he wanted something so badly that he could scream. And he was going to get to the bottom of it. He had to. He simply couldn't afford _not_ knowing why this mysterious character had this power over him. It was dangerous to leave it unchecked, dangerous to―

―"AHHHHHHH!" A high-pitched voice shrieked into Tom's ears, and he jumped so hard that he whacked his head on the bottom of the― "THERE'S A TROLL UNDER THE BRIDGE!"

Wh― 

Tom turned, eyes flashing as he went to snarl into the annoying little _brat’s_ pudgy face―"What on EARTH do you think you're doing―!?"

More footsteps other than the ones he'd obvious missed through the din of his own ruminations came plodding over to the bridge and Tom sighed angrily, reeling backwards. Great. Witnesses. And _children_ at that.

"What," He bit out, "do all of you imbeciles want from me now?"

"That's not a riddle!" one of the boys cried, looking vaguely upset.

_"What?"_

"Trolls under the bridge have to tell us riddles!" Another insisted, stamping her foot. "Don't you know how these things work?"

"Tell us a riddle! Tell us a riddle!" Their ear-grating little voices demanded, and Tom nearly crushed the quarter of potato he had left in his palm.

"Yeah, Riddle." Marley, their apparent supervisor, said as she draped her upper half over the railing above and peered down at him. Her long hair dangled down into the grass below. "You should tell them a riddle, Riddle." 

He wondered how it’d feel to take her hair and yank it downwards. She’d probably fall. How hurt would she get? Would she break anything important―?

"TOM, YOU ARE _NOT_ UNDER THAT BRIDGE AGAIN!"

And that was Ms. Cole. Goddammit.

Marley began to giggle, and Tom dropped his face into his knees in exasperation, fantasizing of strangling her in her sleep with her own annoyingly long hair. At least he could see the ends of it dipping into a mud-patch, which was bound to piss her off, but the glee from that wasn’t enough to diminish the creeping anger he could feel as one of the little kids shook his shoulder insistently, still demanding a riddle.

_'If only something could make this godforsaken place worth bearing.'_

* * *

The stairs had seemed very daunting to Harry, considering that just walking through the lake had nearly taken him out, but the problem was a very short-lived one when, in a rare stroke of ingenuity, he asked Goswood, “I don’t s’ppose you could cast a featherlight charm on me and just. Er. Drag me up the stairs by my sleeve or something?”

The two adults with him had exchanged an unreadable glance then, and Dumbledore said quietly―and again with that odd note in his voice― “Perhaps there’s hope for Ravenclaw yet,” which, strangely, resulted in him getting surreptitiously elbowed by Goswood.

There had been an odd pause there, and Harry had said nothing more, a little thrown. Regardless, that was how Harry had wound up floating behind Goswood like her glorified balloon and wondering why he’d never thought to do this before. Oh, and _especially_ after Quidditch practice. This would have been _so_ helpful, he thought. 

_That_ had been around when Harry realized, “Hey, wait a minute, Umbridge’s ban means jack shit here” and he’d promptly had to (poorly) conceal his extreme excitement. The joy had carried on all the way up to Dippet’s office, where he was sitting now, waiting for the adults to stop their whisper-squabbling and just put the damn hat on his head. 

He tried not to wiggle in place, barely able to contain the elation rushing through him at the thought of being in the air again. God, he couldn’t wait for school to start now. He was going to join the Quidditch team _pronto,_ or die trying. 

Er.

Hopefully not literally.

Oh man, he hoped he hadn’t just jinxed it. ‘ _Okay, Potter, get it together, get sorted back into Gryffindor, stay on the down low until September 1st, join the Gryffindor Quidditch team, profit,’_ Harry thought just as Dippet _finally_ approached with the hat. 

“Ready, Mr. Evans?” Dippet said calmly, holding the hat overhead.

Harry nodded quickly. “As I’ll ever be.”

Strangely, the adults crowded around him in the moment, and Harry felt a little bit like a circus animal as Dippet very carefully dropped the grumbling Sorting Hat onto his head. Goswood, Dumbledore, and Dippet alike stood back and watched him with rapt attention. 

“Much too bloody early to be waking me up like this,” The Hat muttered under it’s...er...in an _undertone,_ and Harry sort of sympathized. He didn’t imagine he’d much enjoy being woken up just to be plopped onto some specky little runt’s head with no forewarning either. 

_‘Oi, you watch how you talk about yourself, lad.’_ The Hat grouched into his head, but then, instead of going on, it was curiously quiet for a long while before it spoke again, beginning with a very promising, ‘ _Oh, now this is very curious indeed.’_

Something about the tone set off warning bells in Harry’s head, like when Dudley would wait around the corner for him when he was a kid and hit him with that “GOTCHA” energy. He stiffened, mind scrambling to think of _why_ this sense of foreboding was creeping on―wait a minute.

_Wait a minute._

_‘That’s right,’_ The Sorting Hat agreed, and ice flooded Harry’s arms and legs when he realized, _very_ belatedly, that the hat would most certainly know where he came from.

See, Harry had been so caught up in the euphoria of Quidditch that for a damning moment, he’d forgotten that he lived in a world where _omniscient hats_ existed. Oh god. Oh _god._ What if― 

_‘No, don’t start catastrophizing, I won’t sell you out. Who’d listen to a ratty old hat anyway?’_

Sweet, _sweet_ relief almost immediately swept through Harry, heart attack sufficiently circumvented, but _Jesus Christ,_ that had been dumb of him not to consider. That could’ve gone _very_ poorly, and then where would Harry have been? He kicked himself repeatedly, thinking of a laundry list of curses and other variants of profanity as he tried not to ponder all of the awful things that could’ve happened to him just because he forgot to consider that a _mind-reading hat_ would know that he was from fifty years in the future. _Fuck._

 _‘Oh...interesting, interesting indeed…’_ The Hat muttered, and Harry twitched when it began to chuckle. _‘Yes, it appears you’re well acquainted with me, though I myself have never rested upon your head, Harry Potter. Truly, I am quite interested in all the specifics of how you’ve come to know me, but don’t worry. I’ll see it at some point. A very interesting story going on up here―goodness gracious, are there really that many Weasleys in this future of yours?’_

Harry twitched a bit. _‘Yeah, there is, and one of them is indirectly the reason I’m here. Fancy that. Listen, as bizarre as I’m sure this is for you, would you mind just putting me in Gryffindor and being done with it? As fun as it’d be to entertain you with my, er, my story for a minute, I’d like to make these pricks stop gaping at me already. Dumbledore’s already starting to freak me out. ’_

This was sort of an excuse to get the Hat off of his head faster because, while there was apparently no danger to this, aftershocks from split-seconds of terror were a bitch and Harry _really_ didn’t want this to go on much longer anymore. And it _was_ technically the truth; Harry _did_ want all of these pricks to stop their staring, particularly Dumbledore and Dippet. Those guys were two bozos Harry felt he could very much do withou―

_‘...Gryffindor?’_

Oh. 

Oh, no, no, no, _no._

Harry did _not_ like that tone of voice. 

Harry held up a finger quickly, quickly enough to make Goswood gasp, and he said sharply, “We are _not_ playing that today, _sir._ I don’t―I―” Harry sputtered, panic starting to creep up his legs _._ “I am _not_ above having fisticuffs with a _bloody hat,_ I’ll have you know―”

“Mr. _Evans.”_

Harry ignored Dippet’s scandalized admonishment. “You put me in the Cool Kid Red House _right now,_ or so help me _God―!”_

_‘And let you miss out on stalking Tom Riddle?’_

And―

Time seemed to freeze right then and there. 

Harry could hear an insistent buzzing rise up in his ears, and he went still. Very still. 

_‘You already have a penchant for stalking evil-doing Slytherins, what with this Malfoy boy I’m seeing in your head...why not let you have easy access? Since you’d definitely go after him regardless, oh yes... such ambition in you. Oh, and so resourceful too. Polyjuice potion? Perhaps that warrants cunning as well.’_

Harry’s blood ran _cold._

“What,” Harry’s voice trembled, throat dry. “What the _hell_ are you talking about?”

Harry knew Tom Riddle.

Harry _knew_ Tom Riddle, and he knew better than _anyone_ else who, exactly, he was, just as much as he knew _better_ than _anyone else_ that he was dead.

Tom Riddle was _dead―_ Harry had―Harry had _stabbed_ that violating diary with―he clutched his arm as it throbbed with the memory of the fang that had pierced it, and Harry breathed out hard. 

Tom Riddle was dead. Dead and gone. In…

No. 

_No._

Harry had taken out Tom Riddle once, in _1992_ , but Harry _hadn’t_ taken care of Tom Riddle _here_. 

Because Harry was in _1942._ Tom Riddle...

Unbidden, Malfoy’s snide little voice came creeping into Harry’s head: _“And Father won’t tell me anything about the last time the Chamber was opened either. Of course, it was fifty years ago, so it was before his time, but he knows all about it, and he says that it was all kept quiet, and it’ll look suspicious if I know too much about it. But I know one thing — last time the Chamber of Secrets was opened, a Mudblood died.“_

Malfoy had said that in 1992. It was 19 _42._

Fifty...oh my god. 

Oh _my god._

It all came together at once and without a modicum of grace. The truth, in fact, clonked Harry right on the head with the authority of a proverbial bag of hammers. He felt so _stupid._ How, _how_ could he have forgotten? 1942, over fifty years in the past, over fifty years since― 

_‘So, you’ve figured it out.’_

“The diary…” Harry mumbled, staring determined at a nick in the stonework at his feet and willing his eyes not to burn.

Fifty-four years ago, or now, in 1942, Tom Riddle, who Lord Voldemort used to be, found out about his heritage, opened the Chamber of Secrets and unleashed Slytherin’s Monster. It killed Myrtle Warren in the process, and Riddle went on to blame Hagrid for the debacle, get him expelled, and finally, ultimately, make that abomination of a diary that Harry had had to _stab_. 

Just as his mind ran a million miles a second, a sense of hopelessness rose up in Harry. 

Because he was the only one who knew any of this. 

He was the _only_ one who knew any of this, and the only one who _could_ know, because―because if he told _anyone,_ not only would he _never_ be believed because Riddle was―Harry could remember his words _very_ clearly, he’d said he was _poor but brilliant, parentless but so brave, school prefect, model student_ ―no one would _ever_ believe Harry just for that alone. And count in that the mere suggestion in and of itself just sounded _so―_

No. Harry couldn’t. He couldn’t tell anyone, or he’d get hurt. 

But he couldn’t just _do nothing._ Logic dictated that, since no one else could, Harry would _have to,_ because if he didn’t… Someone innocent would _die_ , and not only that, but in the end, fifty years from now, the theoretical version of himself that would exist here would be left to deal with the ultimate aftermath. And if Harry could _possibly_ spare himself that pain, even if he was never around to appreciate it, nor ever knew...it would be enough. It would _have_ to be enough, because Harry could not, _would_ not let _anyone_ die if he could prevent it.

But _how?_ What could he possibly do to stop it? 

Well.

Wasn’t the answer obvious? Harry thought despairingly, staring at the floor. Get close to Riddle. Get in his good graces, and then stop at _nothing_ to prevent him from ever―no, just stopping him from opening the Chamber wasn’t enough. Harry needed to stop him from ever knowing it _existed,_ from ever knowing that aspect of his heritage in the first place. But the only way he could ever get close enough to Riddle to ever know for sure was…

...Damn. 

_‘And there you are. I knew you could do it. Clever boy.’_

“Never clever _enough,”_ Harry said softly, bitterly, and buried his face in his hands. As if to insult him, the Hat didn’t so much as slide on his head as he tilted it forward. 

So _that_ was how this was going to have to be, Harry thought grimly. Just minutes ago he’d been flying high with the idea of _flying_ again, up on a broom, but it had taken less than several minutes to send any and all hopes he had crashing down into the dirt, because―what was that phrase again? The phrase that described Harry’s life in a nutshell? Oh. Right. Out of the frying pan, into the―

_‘I can’t fathom why you’re feeling so dismal, lad. Why, I’ve never seen such selfless self-preservation. And the cunning, the ambition you have in droves...color Salazar impressed. And all the makings of a fine, fine leader. I can’t think of anywhere you’d belong more.’_

_‘Well, I’ve sure got an idea.’_ Harry thought sharply. 

The Sorting Hat gave pause there, and then hummed consideringly. _‘I can’t decide if my counterpart did you a disservice or not by putting you with the Lions. They did very well for you, lad, truly they did, but Slytherin is the place for you, there’s no doubt about it.’_

Harry felt vaguely sickened by this notion, but it was swept away in a sudden, burning hot flash of anger. “I don’t _want_ to hear that―I don’t―just―shut up and put me in Slytherin already!” 

A sharp gasp came sounding behind him at the same time Dippet exclaimed, “Why I _never―”_ but in that moment, the Hat mumbled in his head, _‘I knew you’d make the right choice. Keep your head and your eyes open. You’ll be alright. Now, brace yourself, lad.’_

Harry squeezed his eyes shut in equal parts hopelessness and anger when the hat finally yelled, “SLYTHERIN!”

Silence prevailed in the room after the Hat made it’s decree, and Harry slowly reached up to lift the Sorting Hat from his head. He lowered it down to his chest and gazed down at it, fighting desperately hard to prevent the terrible shake in his fingers from spreading any further. 

“Dammit.” Harry laughed suddenly and without humor, breaking the silence in the Headmaster’s office. He glared bitterly down at the hat wedged between his palms. “I’m going to have to join the Slytherin Quidditch team.”

“Atta lad,” The Sorting Hat said, and promptly fell asleep.

* * *

Tom twitched. 

There it was. 

That... _feeling_ again. Tom peered out the window and around the vicinity of the orphanage, as if Harry Evans would be outside at the moment and goggling at him through the glass, and wasn’t particularly surprised when he found nothing noteworthy. Same smog-grey sky, same annoying voices jabbering about inane things, same babies sobbing their little hearts out, same―ugh. That stray cat was back. Tom would’ve thought it learned its lesson by now; if it sat outside and made noise, it was _going_ to get kicked. It was a very simple equation. But he supposed that would be giving the beast too much credit. 

“What are you looking for out there? A bomb?”

Tom flinched a bit when a voice came from behind him suddenly, and he turned to face down Andrew, one of the newer orphans. 

“― _Excuse_ me―”

“―Don’t worry about it Tommy boy, radio says there’s no planes coming this way tonight,” Harvey called from across the room, just as Patrick bellowed, 

“The Orphanage won’t be blown up again, unfortunately! Stop praying for it already!”

The cramped room erupted in laughter and Tom fought the pink he could feel rising in his cheeks, folding his arms. It was no secret that he’d been excited to hear that the original Wool’s Orphanage had been blown to bits during his fourth year by an errant plane that flew over, nor was it a secret how quickly that excitement had evaporated when he had to come _back_ to Ms. Cole _and_ be cramped into this goddamned room to boot. 

“You all won’t be laughing so much when I murder your entire―” Tom nearly said ‘families’, but he reconsidered quickly. They were in an orphanage; even he knew that was too out of pocket. “―When I murder all of your loved ones in cold blood.”

“Keep dreaming, Riddle.” 

Tom rolled his eyes and scooted closer to the window sill, pillowing his chin in his arms and leaning. He tried to content himself with watching people go by from the second floor he was situated on. Yes, the original Wool had been blown to bits during the winter of his fourth year at Hogwarts―the blast had killed three girls and five boys, whom Tom could no longer recall the names of―and turned everyone out into the cold for several weeks. As far as he could tell, it had been a completely miserable affair, and he was absolutely gleeful that he’d missed it all. 

He assumed, then, that Hogwarts would _finally_ let him stay for a summer since he had nowhere else to go and _obviously_ they’d deem the muggle world too dangerous for their ‘resident model student’, but much to his chagrin, the orphanage had simply moved several streets down and settled in a drafty, much more cramped building and wizards, once again, displayed their utter lack of brain power by shoving him back here too. Now, all the boys were stuck in one, large room, all the girls were stuck in another, and all the babies were in a third. Everyone had their own bed, but they were lined side by side with bare space in between each, with a simple trunk at the end of every one for the person’s belongings. There was _no_ privacy to be found―the best you got were two or three boys holding up sheets around you as you got dressed.

Even worse, the lack of privacy had effectively halted any and all terrorizing Tom could inflict on these idiots. If someone crossed him, he had to rely on _sneak attacks_ for vengeance at opportune moments, which was often much too risky and idiotic. There were just too many witnesses at all times now; when everyone had their own room, he could set traps, he could isolate people, he could _threaten_ people and it was their word against his―if they ever figured out that the cause of their trouble was him at all. But here? It was just too damn small. There was _nothing_ he could do to these morons without being caught, and that was so much more trouble than it was worth. He just had to―to _take_ their bullshit, like a peasant! It was absolutely _miserable._

And what was even _more_ miserable was that, instead of dying in the blast, _that_ man had _followed_ them.

A sick feeling began to rise up in Tom, unwanted and unbidden, and he tried to push it away quickly, but he couldn’t quite do it. Yes, that man had _followed_ them because now they were even closer to that godforsaken church than they were before, and in their ‘time of need’, that man came by to _help_ because the word and belief of God would _help them._ As if prayer put bread on the table. As if prayer had kept Tom from being―

“You don’t think _he’s_ coming by tonight, do you?” Silas said suddenly, and a stony, tense silence swept across the once buzzing room.

The back of Tom’s neck prickled, and he went very still. 

Silas’s voice seemed awfully loud in the quiet. “Because he came for dinner tonight. That’s usually when…” 

“Don’t.” Tom said suddenly, and with no small amount of tightness. 

“But―”

 _“Don’t_ even bring him up.” Silas jerked away when Tom turned and snarled the words. “Go to sleep, already.” And, as the moment stretched, Tom snapped at the end, “You know who he’ll go for anyway.”

A strange energy settled over the room and Tom bristled, knowing damn well that everyone was staring at him now. These bumbling, blithering _idiots_ couldn’t hide it from him at all; he knew they were laughing at him behind his back, _mocking_ him about this― 

Harvey spoke up suddenly with― “Y-You could camp out in my bed tonight, if you want.”

A tempting offer, sure, but Tom knew damn well what would come from it. He clenched his jaw so hard it threatened to pop and he exhaled slowly, resisting the urge to go over and punch Harvey for even _daring_ to tease him like that. They all knew he couldn’t just stay in a _bed_ with them every night, because then he’d be labeled a _fag,_ and Ms. Cole would make Tom stay _with_ the man, in the church, _alone,_ so that he could pray away his _homosexual tendencies_ and _return to the light of the Lord._ And even if it was just one night, it’d only make that man angrier. He sneered minutely. These morons and their half-hearted ploys would need to do _better_ if they ever wanted to even dream of screwing him over.

“We all know what consequences that’ll reap in the end.” Tom snapped bitterly, crossing his arms around himself tightly to rein in his own rising anger. It wasn’t worth it to show them that they were winning. They _weren’t_ winning. “Just leave me alone and go to bed.”

He noticed several other orphans exchange uncomfortable looks as he turned back to the window, and he glowered at the cat outside, which was staring at him with it’s big, bright yellow eyes shining with candlelight. He set his jaw and sighed, building Occlumency shields one by one in his mind. He’d need them tonight. 

The cat outside meowed once, and then scampered away.

* * *

The rest of the day had passed into a sort of disbelieving haze after the trigger had been pulled.

Harry could vaguely remember the details of Dippet and Dumbledore reprimanding him for his coarse language in the Headmaster’s Office, to which he’d said something to the effect of “What are you going to do about it? Give me detention?” before Goswood had the sense to usher him out of the room _very_ quickly, and from there, he’d stayed perched on one of the deeper bay-window sills in the Hospital Wing, staring angrily at the grout in between all of the bricks.

Goswood had mostly left him alone after the third time he’d accidentally blown a window out―he still didn’t know why he was doing that nor how to stop it―and had taken to cataloging the Hospital Wing’s potion stock for the last half hour or so if Harry’s internal clock wasn’t steering him wrong. He could still hear her muttering under her breath and all of the bottles clinking even now. He leaned his head onto the window, which was starting to get chilled in the darkness of the encroaching night, and sighed. 

He didn't know how to think or feel about the fact that he was undoubtedly going to see Tom Riddle.

He hadn't forgotten a bit of his encounter with the guy's shade in the Chamber of Secrets. Closing his eyes, even now, he could still see a flicker of Riddle's face, down to his sinister little half-smile and that mole on his long, swan-white neck.

He had no idea how he'd feel upon seeing him face-to-face, in the real, legitimate flesh, knowing what he'd done and would do. He had no idea how he’d _react_ in the moment. Some little part of him was up in it's guns, insisting that he ought to just kill the guy and be done with it, but he pushed it down. Out of here in six months or not, six months in Azkaban would still be hellish and he wasn't sure Riddle would go down without a fight. 

And even if he _did_ go down...something inside of him was whispering, what a waste. What an inconceivable, unfathomable _waste_. 

Because if Arthur's story held true, Harry was _going_ to be out of here in six months. No ifs, ands, or buts about it. Two seasons would pass, and he’d be gone, never to return. He could learn _so_ much about Riddle in that time without getting crucio-ed for his efforts. There was _so_ much prying he could get done, secrets he could dredge up, plots he could foil and future ones to find and figure out how to work around. And maybe, just _maybe_ , he could figure out what that Diary that held Riddle's shade had truly been.

He could still hear the ringing, anguished screams it had made all those years ago echoing in the back of his mind. That wasn't normal―it couldn't have been. Every note of that wail had reeked of something deeper and darker than him, deeper and darker than most magic itself.

It _had_ to have been made around this time. That was the only explanation as to why it had gone straight for the Chamber of Secrets, which had been opened this year. So, if Harry played his cards right, he could find out how and _why._

Keep your enemies closer, indeed.

“Hey, darling?” Goswood called softly, and Harry inclined his head towards her. “It’s about time to go to bed. Why don’t you crawl in and get some good sleep? We’ll be figuring out what to do with you tomorrow morning, so I s’ppose you ought to be well-rested for that.” 

Harry translated this quickly in his head: I’m going to sleep. Here’s a good excuse to make you agree to do the same so I don’t have to stay up watching you. You will listen to me because I’m an adult. 

“...Sure,” Harry said, unwilling to argue it but fully intending to crawl right back out of bed and sit on the windowsill again once she left him alone. 

And that was precisely what Harry did. Once the shuffling in her quarters quieted and _remained_ quiet for what must have been at least half an hour, he slunk out of bed and back on the windowsill, watching the firelight from the braziers outside glitter across the lake surface. He had an absurd urge to go swimming, and almost actually went and did it before he remembered that the grindylows might not appreciate that. 

He did, however, want to go for a walk, though. Get his land-legs back, get some nice, cool night air. The works. So, with a precursory glance towards where Goswood was sleeping, Harry slipped off of the windowsill, and tiptoed towards the Hospital Wing’s doors. Silent as a ghost, he prodded them open and leapt into the hallway over where he knew the warning runestones on the floor were, and shut the door softly. 

He stood in place, tuning his ears and waiting, but no shuffling came from inside. It seemed Goswood was still down for the count. Harry breathed out a short sigh of relief, and then pivoted, making his way towards the dungeons. This seemed like a good time to go bother the house elves, and the dungeon would have the chill he was seeking. 

He made it there with no noteworthy incident and spent a good long while in the kitchens, where he had a _very_ nice conversation with all the house elves and made himself a cheese toasty. It was around 2:30am, mid-conversation with the alleged Antsy, that his eyes began to itch with genuine fatigue, and after Harry polished off his third gingersnap, he thought it was about time to go back to the Hospital Wing and get some sleep. 

The house elves were _very_ insistent on walking him back, but Harry rather thought that leading a troop of elves back to the Hospital Wing with him would be a bit much, even for him, so he brushed them off and bid them goodnight, finally stepping back out into the corridor with a forcefully given pouch of gingersnaps resting in his trouser-pocket. 

He’d scarcely taken three steps down the corridor when he heard the voice. 

_“Harry.”_

The hair on Harry’s arms stood on end and he paused, looking around warily. That voice…he inched towards the wall, head swiveling. No one was in the hallway, but it...it _did_ seem colder. 

_“Harry.”_

And there it came again, like a passing whisper carried by the wind, blowing past his ear like a foreboding breeze. He jumped, and pressed his back to the wall, the stonework digging into his spine. Whoa, whoa, _whoa._

 _“Don’t you know how dangerous the dark can be?”_ The voice whispered, this time _right next to him,_ and Harry froze. 

He looked left, he looked right. No one was there. He shrunk a bit, gulping, and balled his fist. Something wasn’t right. _‘Yeah, no_ _shit_ _, Potter. Would’ve never guessed.’_

“Who are you?” He whispered, keeping his voice level. He fumbled for his wand, but it wasn’t in his pocket. _Shit._

“ _Friendly.”_ The voice said, and Harry didn’t believe it for a second. He tried to look for an exit, and braced himself for a scuffle. _Of course this happens. What did I expect to happen? For things to go easily?_ _“I’d get out of here if I were you.”_

...Somehow, this did not at all align with what he’d been expecting. Against his own head, he relaxed minutely, and listened carefully. 

“...Why?” Harry hedged, inching away from where the voice was coming from. 

Harry leapt no less than two feet in the air when several voices came together, in an ominous chorus, _“We didn’t.”_

Oohhhh no, fuck that, fuck that, _fuck that._

 _“Fine.”_ Harry said tightly, and sprang forward, walking through a blast of frigid air―or tried to walk. 

He tripped more than anything, because something in the darkness had curled around his ankles. On reflex he kicked his legs _hard,_ trying to dislodge it, and it worked some, but it still felt like something in the dark was _clinging_ to him. 

And, in a chilling moment, Harry realized that was exactly it.

He could barely believe his own eyes. Like a physical force, the _dark_ was clinging to him. He gasped and, in a wild, instinctive moment, he brought down his hand and _lumos_ came springing out of his palm.

With a faint shriek, whatever the hell had a hold on him retracted, and Harry was left staring numbly at the stonework, heart pounding wildly. 

_“What the hell.”_ He said, heaving, waving his glowing hand to every other patch of darkness around him. 

_“Go,”_ The whispering voices said, and Harry did not fuck around and find out why he ought to again. He turned heel, lumos still in hand, and with adrenaline pumping like mad, he _bolted_ for the stairs. 

It was only once Harry made it back to the Hospital Wing, shaking and gasping, that Goswood came shuffling out of her quarters, took one look at him, and said in a very sympathetic tone of voice, “That’s why we have a curfew, honey.”

As she ushered him towards his bed and wrapped a soft blanket around him with murmured reassurances, Harry looked at the clock.

It read 3:07.

He understood very suddenly why people feared the witching hour. Harry looked at Goswood then, and said very plainly and perhaps for the first time in his life, 

“Get me the _fuck_ out of this school.”

And get him the fuck out of that school she did, for it was only the next morning that she gently roused him with news of Dippet wanting them both to accompany him for breakfast. Harry had been hoping for a peaceful breakfast following his harrowing night, but of course, this was little more than a pipedream. Mostly because Dumbledore was there.

Harry didn’t really know how to explain it, but something about the way Dumbledore kept _looking_ at him gave him some serious heebie jeebies. Which was wrong on _so_ many levels because―because Dumbledore was _not_ supposed to be scary.This was the guy who regularly made his office passwords into _candy._ It was _very_ disconcerting, being legitimately creeped out by Dumbledore, and Harry internally made a note to chew out the older one for his younger counterpart’s conduct when he eventually made it back to 1996. 

hus, breakfast was a very tense affair between him and Dumbledore’s intermittent touch-and-go glaring contests, and the whole debacle was only slightly brightened by Goswood patting his shoulder on occasion and the house elves goggling at him, as if surprised that he were still alive. He was, absurdly, reminded of Dobby by it and shook his head. House Elves and their dubious morals... 

Otherwise. The conversation about Harry’s living arrangements went about as well as expected. 

Harry was absolutely _not_ keen on staying in what was suddenly a creepy murder-castle with invisible ghosts that talked to you. Hogwarts suddenly felt _very_ alien to him and he was _not_ a fan _._ Like, as much as he was not at all. eager to hang out in a _1942_ _orphanage_ and bear the weight of WWII, he’d take his chances with the overarching bomb-threat rather than the immediate threat of, again, creep murder-castle. 

In turn, Dippet had tried to insist on taking Harry to Gringotts for a blood test to see if he had any living family but Harry, knowing _damn well_ what would show up on that paper and absolutely _not_ feeling like dealing with that inevitable dumpster fire, profusely refused this and insisted he’d be placed in an orphanage. 

There were a _lot_ of arguments back and forth. For some reason, all the adults seemed _really_ insistent on Harry getting a blood test, but this insistence did not at all compare to _Harry’s_ insistence that no, thanks, I’d rather not. There was enough jackassery brewing up in September, what with Slytherin and Tom Riddle; throwing in illegitimate child claims with the living Potters was just. It was _not_ on Harry’s agenda. 

So. Eventually. With much argument, it was settled. Harry would be shipped off to some random Wool’s Orphanage and be collected later to be taken shopping for school. He set out for the orphanage that very afternoon, and mostly tuned everyone out as they had the necessary conversations. He stood still, he nodded at the right times, and pondered the witching hour at Hogwarts. 

He only tuned back in once Goswood swept him up into a warm, lingering hug. Unbidden, Harry was vividly reminded of Mrs. Weasley, and that he wouldn’t see her for six months. Suddenly, he had to set his jaw just to keep himself together. 

“Stay safe,” Goswood told him softly, and with one last squeeze on his shoulder, he was left alone with the alleged Ms. Cole.

And just like that, every wizard Harry knew was gone from his life until September. 

Well. At least he might have a couple weeks of peace, now, what with no magic shit to bother him. He never quite appreciated the mundanity of muggle life, did he? He’d certainly have to make the most of it now, huh? He thought about Privet Drive, and pressed his lips in a line. Yes, he realized suddenly, these couple weeks might _actually_ be the only normal time he’d ever have in his _life_. 

And… it seemed like it felt kinda good, actually. 

Ms. Cole stared at him as he sagged in relief and the warmth of Goswood’s hand faded, and her frown seemed to deepen as he said nothing. Harry took a proper look at her face for the first time, trying to focus, and frowned back at her. She pursed her lips, looked him up and down, and said plainly, 

“You don’t look like one of them wizard blokes.”

Harry said nothing, unsure of what to make of this statement. But _yeah!_ Harry _didn’t_ look like a wizard bloke! Good. 

The silence stretched, and then, with a very put-upon sigh, Ms. Cole gestured towards the door and said, “Go find an empty bed upstairs. And don’t blow anything up.”

...Fair enough? Harry shook himself and went to follow her instructions, making his way towards the stairs he’d vaguely heard about earlier, a bit of a spring in his step. Well, there _was,_ up until Harry took _one_ more step around the corner towards the stairs, and with it, sent any and all hopes he had for a peaceful couple weeks to come crashing into the proverbial dirt. 

Because in that moment, he _whacked_ heads with someone who’d been coming down hot. Stars spun in Harry’s eyes as he stumbled backwards, flinging an arm backwards to brace himself on the wall, and when he finally cracked his watering eyes open, there he stood.

Oh.

_Oh._

Harry stared for a _long_ time, trying to dispel the visage of _Tom Riddle_ from before him, but failed because unfortunately, he was very much real.

And wasn’t THAT just Harry’s―fucking― _luck?_ That he’d be―that he’d be PLACED. IN THE SAME— _IN THE SAME—! GODDAMN—_

Harry had to take in _several_ deep, _deep,_ fortifying breaths.

Because wasn’t it _just_ his luck that he’d be placed. Placed in the. Jesus Christ, Harry couldn’t even think it. In the _same—orphanage—_ as— _Tom—Riddle._

God.

This was. This was—this was wonderful! Phe-Phenomenal! Magnificent! Marvelous! SUPERB! GLORIOUS! _DELIGHTFUL! SUPER! GREAT!_ **_FANTASTIC! AMAZING! EVERY―OTHER—SYNONYM―OF―WONDERFUL―!_ **

Hhhhhhh **.** _HHHHHHHHHHHHH_ ! Oh, Harry could’ve _screamed!_

He _very_ pointedly ignored the little voice that crowed, ‘ _Golden opportunity’_ in the back of his head, and instead stared despairingly at Tom Riddle, the baby Dark Lord himself. God, he hadn’t seen this face since 1992, and yet it was _just_ as…

 _...handsome,_ a little voice muttered just as the other, overwhelmingly loud one said “BASTARD-ISH.” 

_‘Shut up, Harry.’_ Harry thought, trying to pull himself together as best as he could and ignore the implications of the foremost adjective he’d used. _‘Focus, dammit.’_

“Hey,” He croaked lamely, fighting back the urge to bury his face in his hands and searching for something to say to plug up the space their pregnant silence had left behind. “Sorry for bumping you, er...corners are such an awful blind spot, huh?”

And, of course, _that_ was when Tom Riddle’s eyes rolled back, and he hit the ground with an incredible, creaking _thump_. 

‘ _...I.‘_

Harry made no move to help him, not at first, and instead stared down at Tom’s prone, unconscious body for what must’ve been at _least_ twenty seconds, utterly uncomprehending. And then―

Harry buried his face in his hands. _“God_ I hate magic.”

Someone was laughing at him somewhere, he just _knew it._

* * *

_"All you have is your fire, and the place you need to reach. Don't you ever tame your demons, but always keep 'em on a leash."_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Harry: Man I wonder why Hogwarts doesn't let students stay during the summer or go out after dark  
> Harry: Like what's going to happen anyway? We've got wands and we're pretty self sufficient people.  
> Harry: and it's not like we lack the space.  
> Harry: what's the dea--  
> Deep Darkness That Has Existed In Hogwarts for a Millenia That Snatches Up Unsuspecting, Solitary Students Who Aren't Smart Enough To Be Wary of the Witching Hour:  
> 


	9. As He is Painted

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tom is experiencing Positive Emotions and his body has no fucking clue what to do with it, something is up with some priest guy and Harry's forehead, some dude called Harvey is nice but also weird about his last name, I am Terrible at archaic british slang, uhhh what the fuck else happened here. OH. Marley's here. Still got mud in her hair.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ok Aspen is still awol and i miss them. for now. take a convo between me and my buddy. She writes under the penname Duplicity here and if u don't read her stuff ARE YOU EVEN A TOMARRY FAN?? bro. go read her shit rn deadass
> 
> Me, after a literal month and a half of not DMing her: _inhales_  
>  Me: Arthur was born February 6th. Harry went missing February 5th.  
> Me: _**AMANDA I DID HIM SO DIRTY OMG HARRY WAS OFFICIALLY MISSING ON ARTHURS FUCKING BIRTHDAY EHFJEKGKDKGKKDKFK**_  
>  Amanda: dklsgjkljsdklgjdklsj oh my god  
> Me: I AM SHRIEKINGGG I DID HIM SO DIRTY -- I’LL HAVE TO ADDRESS IT IN THE NEZT INTERLUDE CHAPTER PLEASEEEEE  
> Amanda: his birthday sdjgklsdgjlsdjlsdgjsl  
> Me: his BIRTHDAY  
> Amanda: i can't even imagine  
> Me: “Hey guess what I hit a milestone half-century age!! Wooo! Oh and MY YOUNGEST SON IS DEAD.”  
> Amanda: KLDJSGLDFJSLDFLDFJL

For a moment, Tom thought he’d been hit with the Cruciatus Curse.

He knew what it felt like, of course. He couldn’t have been so lucky as to avoid it all his life, not being who he was. No, because once upon a time, he’d been the single mudblood in a house full of purebloods, purebloods who’d been raised on blood and curses and whose first words were spells. As if they’d let him go unpunished. No, he remembered it distinctly. They had come to him in the dead of night, pinned him down, whispered awful words into his ears, and their eyes had seemed to glow in the darkness as one held their wand over his chest and cast it. 

You never forget what your first Cruciatus feels like. 

Words don’t do it justice, though they try hard to. You thrash, you scream, you claw at yourself and the floor in equal parts, and nothing relieves it. It’s inescapable, it’s unavoidable. It makes death feel merciful. All that exists in the world is pain. All you can conceptualize is pain. All you _know_ is pain. You forget where you are. You forget who you’re with. You forget your own name. All of it, all of you is stripped away in the spare moments that you’re underneath it. 

And then it’s over. Your hands don’t stop shaking for days. Perhaps, if you’re unlucky, they never stop shaking at all. And sometimes, when it’s cold, or wet, your fingers will jerk and spasm. Tom’s did. 

This, though. This was not the Cruciatus Curse. 

It was worse. 

This was _like_ the Cruciatus Curse but slower, more insidious. It crept along inside of him and took it’s time to lave it’s barbed, molten tongue over every inch it explored. It took every word in his head and rewrote it in sharp, jagged script that stabbed at the soft tissue inside. It took every memory, one by one, and threw them on the floor just to puzzle them back together as if with the clumsy fingers of a child. It took his heart, his very heart, and scrambled it like an egg, fried it on a pan, and jammed it back inside of him like a square block into a round hole. 

And it burned. It burned, and burned, and burned. 

It was pain. It was divine, inescapable, unavoidable, inconceivable pain.

His heart seized in a staccato rhythm and a bone-deep ache festered just beneath the skin, until his chest contracted and his lungs pulsed, until the floor was unbearable and the slide of fabric over his skin made him want to scream, until he couldn’t stop moving, couldn’t stop thrashing, until he was screaming. He had to have been.

Footsteps thumped towards him, making Tom’s body rattle with every one of them. Or maybe he was just convulsing. He didn’t know anymore. Voices were yelling now, 

_“Oh my god, is he okay!?”_

_“What happened?”_

_“Did he fall?”_

_"Tom? Can you hear me?”_

_“Hey, come on, now, stay with me—”_

_“Riddle?”_

His head pounded in tandem with every word and he couldn’t suppress a moan as he curled in on himself, jamming his hands over his ears. It was a cacophony in his head, an assault of syllables ramming against his eardrums until his vision spun. Liquid, wet and itchy, trickled down his face, running smoothly and ceaselessly. 

A shadow fell across his vision, and he shuddered in earnest as _something_ came over him. 

It was him.

It was _him._

Tom laid on the ground, gasping for air and finding it lacking as he stared up at _him._

It _had_ to be. 

It was the _only_ explanation for this—this indescribable— 

His face was framed with wild dark curls, lined by a strong, angular jaw. A straight-edged nose, deep, romantic lips. Adorned with thin wire-framed glasses were two luminous green eyes, inlaid in dark skin. 

A single flash of lightning marred it, and Tom felt himself stop breathing.

Harry Evans, for that was surely who this was, who it _had_ to be, leant over him, waving his hand in front of his face. Tom could barely see him. His lips were moving but all Tom could focus on was the cupid bow that quivered with every word. He looked worried. He looked like he was in pain too. One hand cupped his own face, and Tom could see the words stretched taut over the skin—I must not tell lies. 

Something hot and red dripped onto his face. 

Evans reached down then and cupped his cheek, warm palm over burning skin. Tom froze as _something_ began to well up within him, something alien in its entirety. The corners of his eyes crinkled. 

_“I’m sorry.”_ Evans’ lips mouthed.

His thumb ran gently along Tom’s cheek, wiping away whatever had dripped there, and Tom breathed out _hard._ Liquid heat, pin-pricks of fire raced up and down his body, all stemming from that single point of contact. It was like his bones were burning and his head was splitting apart from the middle. His ears were ringing, his body trembling. Tom made a muffled noise, a wild, throaty sort of thing, panic palpable and humiliating, and an absurd, impossible urge came over him. 

He wanted to be closer. 

With impossible strength, in a burst of energy he didn’t know he possessed, Tom seized Evans’ wrist and clung onto it for dear life, keeping his hand affixed to his face. He leaned to it, tried to meld himself into it, tried to mesh with it so as to never be an individual again. 

It was salvation. It was necessary. It was essential, absolutely vital that he _did not let go._

It happened slowly, like pegs being slotted in one by one, steady and timed. The ringing in his ears faded. The pain began to ebb away. His body relaxed. His heart stopped pounding. His head stopped throbbing. Green eyes bored down into his own, looking so helplessly confused, but Tom did not speak. He didn’t think he could. A bone-deep exhaustion swelled inside of him, until his eyes were drooping and muscles turned to putty. Something was yawning up and out of him. His grip on Evans’ wrist never faltered. 

Some sort of understanding seemed to pass between them both, Tom thought. There were a lot of things he wanted to ask. _Who are you? What was that? What is this? Why did that happen? What did you do? Where are you from? What do you mean for me? Why do I feel so warm? Why are you here?_ But they both knew he couldn’t. Not yet. 

“Ow,” He said softly, thoughtlessly, grip loosening on Evans’ wrist almost against his will as something like darkness encroached, and Evans’ eyes seemed to soften. 

His lips moved, he said something, but Tom couldn’t hear it. He didn’t have enough time to before he went down, right there at the foot of the stairs. He wasn’t bothered. 

_He’ll take care of it. He knows. He knows something. He’ll tell me. I’ll know it too. Until then...until then…_

And although Harry did not know it, not then, Voldemort died a quiet death in that moment, right there in his arms.

* * *

Harry had no _goddamn_ idea what the fuck had just happened there. 

He could feel all the eyes on him like a physical weight as he anxiously waited for the girl he sent off to get Ms. Cole to return, and he shrunk beneath their collective stares, ears burning hotly as he wiped the blood off his forehead, filing _that_ away as “deal with later”. Everyone was murmuring and muttering, giving him furtive, calculative glances, and Harry busied himself with wrenching his wrist free from Riddle’s death grip and getting him into a more comfortable position as they waited for authority to arrive. 

He could already see minute bruises purpling on the boy’s neck and arms—Jesus, he bruised fast—and hastily propped him up on his thighs before the floor could exacerbate them more. It must’ve made for quite the image—a baby dark lord halfway pulled into his lap, head pillowed into the crook of his neck and shoulder, limp and utterly dead to the world—as just the mere sight of it had Ms. Cole hollering down the hallway, 

“I _told you_ to find an empty bed, not—not murder one of your fellow orphans!” Her footsteps tapped towards him rapidly. “What the _devil_ happened here, boy?!”

Yeesh. Harry was very unpleasantly reminded of Aunt Petunia and he turned towards Ms. Cole, barely suppressing the cringe rising on his face. Suddenly, he didn’t think she was going to be too helpful. 

Before he could get in a word, she looked down at Riddle—and then almost immediately dropped her face into her hands. “Oh, lord have mercy, it’s Riddle. _Again._ What did you do to him? _”_

“I didn’t _do_ anything!” He snapped defensively, knowing damn well that, even if it was the truth, it surely didn’t look like it. 

And just as he knew she wouldn’t, Ms. Cole didn’t believe him, shook her head, and said sharply, “You _must’ve_ done something, boy, to send him into a fit like—”

“Please, Madam.” One boy piped up so suddenly that his voice sounded like a gunshot in the muted foyer. “He’s telling the truth. He and Riddle ran into each other by accident, he apologized, and then—well, you heard. Riddle just lost it! But _he_ didn’t do anything more than tap him, honest.” 

Ms. Cole stared at the other boy long and hard, and Harry was briefly glad he wasn’t under that glare. The silence stretched, and then, it just.

It rocketed from there. As if emboldened by the one boy speaking up, the floodgates crashed open and several voices began to talk at once—and all on _Harry’s_ side. He looked over all the orphans explaining the story, and blinked, completely dumbfounded. Somehow he...he hadn’t expected anyone to actually rise to his defense. That hadn’t ever really happened before. 

Ms. Cole looked a little flustered and she peered between all of the orphans in her care, lips pursed tightly. “Then Riddle threw a fit over—over Evans _touching_ him?”

An odd energy settled over the room, and everyone turned to look at Harry and then amongst themselves, shuffling. Harry realized very quickly that no one quite knew how to explain what, exactly, had just happened with Riddle and were hoping _he_ knew, which was problematic because not even _Harry_ knew. It wasn’t that Riddle had—had thrown a _fit._ It had seemed almost...involuntary? Like he was trying not to, but the effort was hopeless. Either way, though, Harry knew for certain that the reaction Riddle had had, _whatever_ it was, was definitely real. 

He turned to express this, but it seemed Ms. Cole had come to her own conclusion moments before he came to his own, because she reached down to Riddle’s shoulder and began to shake it insistently. “That’s _quite enough_ of your little game, young man—!” She began. 

Riddle made a quiet, unhappy noise right into Harry’s ear, and entirely on impulse, Harry cradled Riddle’s head hurriedly and batted Ms. Cole’s hand away. “Oi, oi, oi. He’s not faking it.” He said quickly, pulling Riddle slightly closer. 

And honestly, he wasn’t. You couldn’t fake this kind of limpness so well. Harry himself had learned that the hard way when he was a kid. 

“Then what _is_ he doing?” Ms. Cole demanded, looking more and more impatient by the second, and Harry looked around, scrambling for an answer. 

“Er.” Good question. “Well, I’d ask him, but he’s a bit busy being unconscious, you know.” Ms. Cole did not look impressed by this. “I _really_ dunno what you want me to tell you, he—I hit heads with him hard enough to nearly knock myself out, and he went into a fit. Not because he was angry—something hurt. I don’t know _why._ He just fainted ‘s all. He’s probably fine.”

This, evidently, was not enough of an explanation for her, and she expressed as such. “If you don’t give me a good answer as to why he’s sprawled out on the floor _right now,_ there’s going to be _consequences,_ I tell you—!”

Several voices came tumbling out of thin air, demanding Ms. Cole to retract that threat— _“It’s not his fault! It was an accident!” “Please, Madam, just let him take Riddle up to rest, nothing bad happened!”_ —but it all came to a sudden, unceremonious halt the second a strange, throaty voice said, 

“I do hope I’m not intruding at a poor time?”

The hair on the back of Harry’s neck stood on end almost immediately, and his breath caught. 

A chill seemed to race through every child in that room and Harry looked amongst them, eyes flickering between their tense, wide-eyed faces. He noticed several older boys go white, and almost every eye flew to Riddle. 

... _Er._

Seemingly completely ignorant to the sudden shift in the room, Ms. Cole turned to the voice and everything in her body language relaxed, as though she were greatly relieved by the new person’s presence. Her reaction was the absolute antithesis of everyone else's. That didn’t bode well. Not at all. 

“Father Millard!” She said warmly, looking relieved. “These boys are being so difficult, you know. You wouldn’t mind helping me get the truth out of them? Honestly, they’re saying this— _boy,”_ She gestured none-too-gently at Harry. Ah. Racism. “—just hit poor Tom here on accident, and _somehow_ that was enough to send him to the floor. It’s _blatantly_ a lie, you see—”

“Is it?” The priest said, voice sounding warm—but something in his eyes seemed impossibly cold. “What makes you think so, my daughter?”

Ms. Cole faltered. “I—er—well, a simple collision doesn’t send a boy _screaming,_ does it?”

“It _did.”_ Harry said suddenly, firmer than he thought he would as Riddle began to stir. “When he wakes, I’m sure he’ll tell you the same thing. Can I—can I just get him _off_ the floor?” 

“Not until you—” Ms. Cole began, but Harry, in a split-second decision, made a gamble and said, pushing as much authority in his voice as he could muster, 

“I didn’t want to make this so public, _Madam Cole,_ but since you’re leaving me with no choice, you should know the reason he fell had something to do with _our_ kind. As I’m sure you know as well as I do what we are.” 

_‘No one ask, no one ask, please, no one ask.’_ Harry thought frantically, pulling Riddle incrementally closer to himself. He watched Ms. Cole blanch, and her eyes flitted between him, the priest, and then the rest of the children. 

“Well, I—!” She said, looking flustered. “Goodness _gracious,_ Evans, you couldn’t have said so sooner?” 

... _Phew._

“Dear me, whatever does he mean by, ‘our kind’?” The priest said in a very leading tone as he stared down at Harry. Harry, oddly, had never wanted to punch anyone more in his life. _“Surely_ he doesn’t mean…?”

Harry furrowed his brows, trying to decipher what the hell he was trying to insinuate. He noticed several boys move towards him, and it hit him like a bag of bricks. Oh. _Oh._

“We’re not _queer,_ I can assure you of _that.”_ Harry snarled, preparing to stand as gasps erupted from all around him. He shot a pointed look at Ms. Cole, who stood there frozen, and said goadingly, “Though, if you’d so like me to, I think I’d be _more_ than happy to _show_ you what we are, if—”

“No, no, I think that’s quite enough, Mr. Evans.” Ms. Cole said quickly, holding her hands out with a fearful glance. “Very well, I understand the situation completely. You’re excused to—to take care of your business.” Her tone was such a far cry from her initial snap, and Harry bristled inside from it. He wasn’t a _monster,_ dammit. 

“I shall prepare his bed for him, then.” The priest said suddenly, voice interjecting oddly again, and he made a move towards the stair. For some reason, warning bells went off in Harry’s head, and he shifted away. “Come, Mr. Evans—it _was_ Evans, wasn’t it? We’ll put him to sleep together and I will...pray to God to guide me to healing his illness.” 

Ms. Cole seemed distinctly uncomfortable suddenly, and she looked between Harry and Riddle. “I’m not sure that will be necessary, Father.” She said hesitantly. 

“Nonsense, Judith. He’ll be quite alright under my care, I’m sure. I’ll prepare his bed, and wait.” He said simply, dismissively, and Harry watched with no small amount of trepidation as Ms. Cole relaxed. 

And with no further argument, Harry watched the priest go up the stairs carefully, sunlight shining down. The tap of his shining, black shoes were awfully loud in the stony silence in the foyer, and Harry watched the crucifix on his hip jangle dully as he walked. Then, his eyes flickered to the shadow on the wall, and something about it....there was something about it, alright, because it made his arms prickle. 

So. Alright, then. Harry nodded to himself, craning his wrist awkwardly to rub his other arm. There was no way in _hell_ that he was following this bloke. Thanks, God, your warning was heard loud and clear. 

“Well, you heard him, boy.” Ms. Cole broke the sudden silence, unwittingly making a joke out of Harry’s previous thought as she nudged Harry’s shoulder with her calf. “Go on up there with Tom. He’ll take care of him. Lord knows you two should listen to God sometime, what with...” She trailed off, and with a sudden, discomfited look, she finished snippily, “Well, you _know.”_

Harry caught _several_ terrified glances sent his way, and looked directly at the orphans still all around him and Riddle. He had a very, _very_ bad feeling, and the looks he was getting weren’t encouraging in the slightest. He locked eyes with one boy in particular, with wavy blonde hair and a very square jaw, and once he noticed Harry looking back, he looked meaningfully towards the stairs, and shook his head minutely. It seemed that other children noticed this interaction, because all of a sudden, from every direction, Harry began to get an overwhelming amount of subtle (or not-so-subtle) signs that he should absolutely, positively _not_ take Riddle upstairs. 

...Well. Obviously, his decision had some merit as something was _very_ screw-y here. Harry really thought that he trusted the judgement of both himself and a shitload of fellow orphans rather than one snippish woman, so as he looked over the room he was _very_ clearly reading, his decision was further solidified. 

So he straightened his back, puffed out his chest, and said as firmly as he dared, “No, I don’t think I will.”

If it were at all possible, the silence in the room seemed to intensify. 

_“Excuse me?”_

Ms. Cole sounded fit to explode just from those three syllables alone, but Harry doubled-downed and, in a quick action, he pulled Riddle fully onto himself, braced him underneath his forearm, and stood, bringing Riddle’s unconscious body up with him. It was worryingly easy to lift the boy up, but that was a thought for another time. He drew some inspiration from Alastor Moody and stood in the most authoritative position he could possibly drum up. He looked Ms. Cole straight in the eye, and said very coarsely and with no room for argument,

“I think _I_ know what he needs better than _anyone else,”_ No, he did _not,_ but Ms. Cole didn’t need to know this, “thank you very much. I’m. _Not._ Taking him. Upstairs.” 

This was _such_ a gamble and Harry hated his odds, but to his relief, Ms. Cole already looked like she was wilting. He glared as strongly as he could, drawing out a part of himself he usually did his best to tamp down since it typically only led to more trouble, and he kept his face firm even when Riddle began to stir. 

“Well, I _never!”_ Ms. Cole cried in a sudden burst of energy, but she retreated towards the stairs. “I suppose I’ll have to go upstairs and apologize to Father Millard for the _rude_ treatment, won’t I?”

She seemed to think that this would make Harry falter, but all he did was scoff, taking a step backwards towards the other orphans. She...just reminded him _so much_ of Aunt Petunia. And not in a flattering way. She spoke like her word was law, used words to _hurt,_ weaponized shame...and she didn’t care at all. He could see it in her eyes. Whether it was straight vindictiveness or a care burnout, Harry knew Ms. Cole didn’t give a flying _fuck_ about these kids. 

She didn’t care about their safety, or their growth, or their thoughts, or their happiness. She wanted them to be quiet, and to _listen._ Maybe even to validate her. Harry didn’t care about the possible circumstances behind her attitude, he decided—it didn’t matter if she was burnt out or not used to this. It was _her_ responsibility to become more qualified for care, and she was making a choice _not to._ It was _her_ job to be a good authority figure to all these kids, and she was making a choice _not to._ It was _her_ job to be decent, and she was making a choice _not to._

It was _her_ job to notice when every orphan in the room was clearly afraid of one man, and clearly, she was making a choice _not to._

Harry decided right then and there that he didn’t like Ms. Cole at _all,_ and that he would be more than happy to burn the bridge between them than let her take another step closer to him. As if she existed just to be contrary to his thoughts, she made a move away from the stairs and towards him, and Harry held Riddle up with one arm just to hold his free hand threateningly over his pocket. His wand wasn’t even in there, but Ms. Cole stopped dead, held his gaze for bare moments longer, and then with a derisive scoff, she glowered at him, turned heel, and then hurried up the stairs, leaving Harry alone downstairs with Riddle still in his arms. 

...Huh.

Somehow, Harry hadn’t altogether expected that to work, but it had, and he wasn’t going to look the gift horse in the mouth. He floundered a little, wondering what he ought to do now. He _said he_ knew what to do with Riddle (who was still limp in his arms, god help him) but he didn’t _actually._ He’d never been in this position before. What did you _do_ with the baby form of your mortal enemy in your arms?

God, wasn’t _that_ the question of the era? Who asked shit like that? Harry shook his head, back of his neck prickling uncomfortably with the weight of everyone’s collective stare, and he wiggled a bit. Well. Riddle, while alarmingly easy to lift up (and still worryingly still), got exponentially heavier and heavier with each passing moment. Harry had a distinct notion that human bodies weren’t designed to pick up like, oh, eight, nine(?) stones’ worth of teenage boy for elongated periods of time, so he supposed that the first order of business would be to set Riddle down somewhere. But where would he…?

Oh, duh. He was surrounded by people that lived here. 

“As much as I like loitering here, I think it’d be nice if my arms stayed attached to my body, so I need to put this bloke down somewhere. Upstairs is out, so…” He called dryly, shifting Riddle in his arms uncomfortably. “Does the peanut gallery have any advice to offer?”

Some murmuring came up and Harry heard several voices mutter, “Peanut gallery?” and he winced. Right. That probably wasn’t a well-known slang term in 1942, was it? _Dammit, Mr. Weasley. Your old timey lingo has misled me._

“Follow me, there’s a sitting area.” One particularly brave-looking girl said suddenly, and she walked past Harry, only pausing long enough to give him a moment to jerk into motion himself. 

He trailed behind her awkwardly, taking care not to whack Riddle’s head on anything—he had a very narrow miss with a particularly gaudy and tall flower pot—and tried not to bump into anything. It was a bit difficult to see the ground directly in front of him over Riddle’s limp body, and though he made it work well enough, it was with no small amount of relief that he finally laid Riddle down on a sad-looking couch the girl indicated. 

Of course, Harry uses the word “laid Riddle down” very loosely, because while he _tried_ to put him down in full, Riddle had shifted from a deathgrip on his wrist to, apparently, a death grip on his shirt instead. He tried to pry Riddle’s fingers from it, but once he heard the fabric begin to creak ominously, Harry quickly abandoned that effort and sighed. He shot a long-suffering look to everyone in the general vicinity, and with half-hearted, mumbled apologies, Harry bit the bullet and slid into place next to Riddle.

So, of course, Riddle c— _cuddled_ right up next to him, even going so far as to bury his face in Harry’s neck. 

Jesus Christ. 

Harry squeezed his eyes shut, screaming on the inside and masking it poorly. “So I take it that he enjoys—” _accosting people in his sleep,_ Harry thought stressedly, “—cuddling?”

“No.” The girl in front of him said bluntly, long hair swaying as she shook her head resolutely. He noticed a bit of mud clinging to the ends of it and wondered if she knew. “Not at all.”

Great. So, Harry was the exception. Very on brand for him, thanks God. 

“Wonderful.” Harry said a tad too late with a wry headshake. “So. Er. What was your name again?”

“I never told you it. What’s yours?” She said, something hard in her eyes, and Harry winced. Ouch. 

“I’m Harry. Harry P—” Shit. “ —Evans.”

“Harry Pevans?” _Shit._

“Evans,” Harry (un)corrected softly, looking askance. 

“Why was there a P in there?” 

Harry scrambled to find an explanation. Er. Stall! “What is this, a pop quiz?” 

_“Why_ was there a P in there?” She said again, without taking the bait and, this time, with an accusing jut of her chin. 

Dammit. Thankfully, an idea struck him in that moment, and he looked the girl dead in the eye and said firmly, “I almost tossed my middle name in there, ‘s all.” 

“And what is it?” She said.

Harry froze for a moment, but recovered quickly. What was embarrassing enough to justify him not wanting to give it, but normal enough to not raise eyebrows? He nearly threw out ‘Percival’ but when it reminded him unpleasantly of Percy, in a split second decision he said, with a (hopefully) convincing abashed face, 

“Prince.”

Moments passed slowly as she scrutinized him, but something in her face seemed to smooth incrementally, and Harry heaved an inward sigh of relief. “Marley Jean Marshall, if we’re going to know each other’s middle names.” She said suddenly, and she took a seat in the narrow space next to his right knee. 

“Charmed.” Harry winced when Riddle shifted. “One of my best friends shares your middle name,” He mumbled dumbly, thinking of Hermione and frowning. 

What he wouldn’t give for her insight on ‘Marley’ and her weird interrogation right now...or for Ron to butt in and tell Marley to piss off. Maybe some variant thereof, something that’d make Hermione scourgify his mouth. His lips quirked at the thought, but the smile died a quiet death. _‘Don’t think about it.’_ he said, pushing the words _six_ and _months_ out of his mind. He was nearly one month through already, he assured himself, given just how much time he’d spent unconscious. It would go fast, right? 

This would be easy. 

—Shit, Marley had been talking. He tuned back in just in time to hear her say, “—and I don’t think he’s eaten much all day, though, so it could be that. I doubt it, though. I know he looks like a stick, but he’s hardier than that. Do you have any ideas?”

Harry stared for a minute, trying to figure out what the hell she was asking him about. He thought about what he’d already heard, made the connection, and blurted, “Not a clue. I don’t have any real ideas on what made him go down.”

“...He reacted very strongly to you.” She hedged, and Harry frowned, trying to rationalize an explanation for that himself. 

“Yeah, I don’t know either. That was weird.”

Marley didn’t seem deterred by his dry answer, though, and tilted her head. “And you told Ms. Cole that you and him were...were similar. That you two were people like each other _._ Can’t fathom what that meant, but it was obviously _something.”_

Harry sucked on his teeth, reevaluating the intelligence of saying something that leading in front of all the kids. Some truth wouldn’t kill him here, would it? “You know how Riddle goes off to a boarding school every year?” He said cautiously. 

“Oh.” Marley blinked, and then, she stood up suddenly. She looked a little frightened. “So you’re both going to a reform school?”

Harry blinked, caught in a little fit of whiplash. Why…? _Reform_ school? That was the—holy shit. That was the same lie _Petunia_ told people! _‘Oh my God, are Ms. Cole and Petunia related?’_

“And—And he screamed when he saw _you.”_

Harry very suddenly understood the implication of Marley’s words and shook his head hurriedly, clearing his thoughts of Petunia. “Who the hell told you it was a _reform_ school?” He said, pushing as much of a scandalized tone into his voice as he possibly could, even though he knew damn well who had probably said that. 

“Is it not?” Marley said cautiously, not edging away more but not coming closer either. 

_“No!”_ Harry said, forcing himself to look aghast. “No, no. It’s just a private boarding school somewhere in Scotland. I think Riddle goes there because his parents prepaid for it before he landed here, some sort of insurance for him, I dunno, and _I_ just go because my family had some measure of money.” Harry bullshitted/explained quickly, praying this wouldn’t prompt further questions because he really had nothing past this point. 

Marley, thankfully, seemed to take his word for it and held her hand to her chest, looking a bit faint. “Oh, thank goodness. I thought, for a moment, that you, er, might be some sort of real psychopath.” 

_‘The only psychopath nearby is next to me.’_ Harry thought snippily. He looked at Marley, waiting for her to say anything else, but she didn’t. She kept looking between him and Riddle, the latter with an odd, stressed softness about her, and she wrung the end of her blouse in her hands. Finally, though, she inhaled sharply, and spoke again. 

“Just—keep him with you, until _that man_ leaves.” There was a distinct snarl in her tone as she said ‘that man’ which left Harry with no uncertainty about who she was referring to. “I’ll—oh, I’ll put on the radio and bring him some water. And—and a blanket. Do stay put.”

With that, she tapped away and Harry was left with the dulcet tones of who he vaguely recognized as Vera Lynn. Much of that afternoon was spent with him avoiding the curious stares of the other orphans (who were still cautious around him) and sending nasty, warning glares to Ms. Cole whenever she stomped past, as well as making various attempts to coax Riddle into drinking water whenever he could get the bloke to actually wake _up._ This was interspersed with several times that Harry started to nod off. He didn’t know why, but something about sitting next to Riddle was just...really, _really_ exhausting. Like Riddle was leeching something out of him. ‘ _Oh man, I wonder why it might be draining to sit next to the bloke that murdered your parents. What a mystery.’_ He’d thought to himself at one point. 

So, of course, trying to make the bloke that murdered his parents eat dinner was both the antithesis of what he would rather like to do to Riddle, as well as a whole ordeal on it’s own. There was another (and distinctly mortifying) one to face down when he tried to make Riddle use the loo before bedtime, which was right after Father Millard (or _that man_ as so many referred to him) finally fucked off for the night, looking noticeably frustrated. Harry will not describe to you what it was like to make Riddle take a whizz. Suffice to say that it took a great deal of harassment to make it happen, nearly as much as it took to get Riddle to let go of him and hang out in his own bed when it was finally time to go to sleep. Harry could only sigh in exasperation, too exhausted to do much else, when he saw that the other orphans had ‘coincidentally’ put his things by the bed right next to Riddle. 

Harry nearly cracked a joke to the orphan (Harvey, apparently) to his left, something like “a knut says I wake up with that nutter in my bed.” but stopped, knowing he wouldn’t know what a knut was. What the hell was a slang term for money in the 40s? Mr. Weasley had a whole arsenal of ‘muggle’ terms for money that Harry had had to gently explain to him were slang from before even _he_ was born, but he could still recall a couple more ridiculous ones. Hadn’t Mr. Weasley asked the bloke at the till on the way to his trial for a ‘cows’ in return? Something ridiculous like that, all over a pound, and it had been from...shit, was it the 30s or the 40s? Ugh, this was so much effort for a wry joke. 

Fuck it. “A cows says I wake up with him drooling on my shoulder,” Harry told Harvey softly, cocking his head towards Riddle (who was sprawled on his mattress face-down and seemingly very displeased about it, based on the furrow of his brow). 

Harvey didn’t look confused, though; he smiled (it seemed strangely familiar) and rolled his eyes. “Don’t weaponize that 30s shite on me, my gran used to spew it all the time, up until she, well...” He grimaced, gestured around himself generally, and Harry understood immediately and snorted. Harvey grinned back, settling on the bed to Harry’s left. “Rhyming slang though, eh? You heard of ‘deep sea diver’?”

Harry thought hard, thinking about it. He’d heard it before, hadn’t—oh. “Deep sea diver fiver?” 

Harvey snapped his fingers. “That’s the ticket, mate.” He leaned back into his bed and tucked his arms underneath his head, eyes shutting, and stayed quiet for a moment before his eyes opened again and he craned his neck to look up at Harry. “So you and Ol’ Tommy really _are_ some posh students, eh? Did your school get bored with all the Oxford ponces and throw in the rabble for fun?” 

It took Harry a second to figure out what Harvey was referring to, but nodded with a huff of a laugh. “Yeah, I suppose they did. ‘S not a bad place to be, even if some...most...of the old-money kids are a bunch of twats.” He said, thinking of Malfoy, when he noticed Harvey had an odd look about him, sort of like Ron did whenever money came up. Harry quickly tried to soften it by tacking on, “It’s not as glamorous as you might think, though. The, er, the workload is killer.”

“Better than working your arse off in a factory though, I expect.” Harvey sniffed, rolling over to face him properly. “Shoulda known you were educated though—you talk funny.” Ouch. “So how’d a Paki like you ever get into, well, y’know, a well-off place like wherever you two go anyway?”

Harry twitched at “Paki” but didn’t comment, drawing his knees up to his chest. He didn’t have a clue how to explain “oh, we’re wizards and I have a vault full of wizard money at the bottom of London” without sounding ridiculous and was too tired to work it out, so he shrugged and said, “I dunno, nepotism?” 

Harvey didn’t laugh. He looked confused. “What’s nepotism?” 

Oops. No, wait, Harry was pretty sure that was a word by now. _‘Uneducated orphan, Potter. Jesus.’_ “Er, basically, it’s just a word that describes the thing people with power do, where they usually give power and, er, influence to relatives or friends, like by giving them a job over normal people.” Harry thought about where he himself had heard the term and shook his head. “Uncle Vernon used to whinge about it all the time, it was dreadful to listen to.”

Harvey huffed a short laugh this time and put his head in his palm to prop himself up. It reminded Harry so much of Ron that his heart clenched, and he looked away. “I take it you don’t miss him much, then?” 

Harry laughed incredulously, horrified by the thought. “No, not at _all._ I half-hope he’s dead, sometimes.” 

Harvey blinked suddenly and perked up. “You reckon he’s alive?”

“I _know_ he is,” Harry sighed, thinking. He amended suddenly, and with a faint touch of dread, “At least, he was the last I saw him.”

“And you came here instead of trying to find him?” 

Oh. That’s right. Harry was in an orphanage. “Nah,” He muttered, rubbing the back of his neck and thinking dully of his cupboard. “Anywhere’s better than being with him. Or my aunt. Yeesh.” 

“What was so awful about ‘em?” 

Harry didn’t answer for a while, struggling to form even the barest semblance of a response. How the hell did he describe the Dursleys to someone he’d never met? _‘Oh, hey, I just met you, and this is crazy, but here’s all the layers of my tragic backstory, no refunds baby?’_

Harvey seemed to notice that he hit a sore spot, though, and when Harry said, “Well, that’s a loaded question,” He held up his free hand and stopped him. 

“Don’t worry about it, mate. Tell me later. You look knackered, anyway.”

Harry was sure that was true—he _felt_ knackered and was putting no effort into concealing it whatsoever. “Yeah, we ought to sleep.”

“I’ve got work tomorrow, I definitely should. Goodnight, Evans.” He said the word Evans like it had weight, and Harry didn’t know what to make of it.

So, Harry said softly, “G’night,” and curled up beneath the thin blanket the orphanage provided him with, breathing quietly and realizing that he didn’t know Harvey’s last name. 

Maybe Harvey had wanted him to ask for it? He stared at Riddle’s form on the bed, across from his own, and considered. What could Harvey’s last name be? Smith….Jones….Williams….Taylor….Davies…. he watched Riddle’s lips part and the way his hair in front of his mouth swayed with every puff of breath. He wondered if having hair on his neck was uncomfortable. Harry hated sleeping with his hair on his neck—he always swept it up and above him, so it wouldn’t touch his skin and itch. Brown….Wilson….Thomas….Johnson….surely Harvey’s surname wasn’t Evans too? Wouldn’t that be funny? There were loads of Evans in the UK, weren’t there? 

Roberts….Walker….Wright….Edwards…. His eyes dropped shut somewhere between Thompson and Lewis. He saw the lights in the room flicker out, known only by how the fuchsia glow from the light hitting his eyelids extinguished. Harry hardly noticed. Footsteps puttered past, creeping around his bed softly, and he wondered who they belonged to. Voice murmured, and then halted. Harris….Martin….Jackson….He had a brief, passing thought of red hair and freckles, puffy brown hair and brown skin....

And then Harry snapped awake very suddenly, blearily thinking, “Clarke''. He peered around confusedly, feeling distinctly irritated as he tried to figure out what the hell had just woken him. His dream had been nice this time, he was sure if it. So, whoever or _whatever_ it was would get a foot up it’s arse (or equivalent thereof) if he had anything to say about it, he swore…

It seemed as though his ears woke up moments after he himself did, because finally, a strange tapping and suppressed series of noises filtered through, and he groggily turned towards where it was coming from. 

**In the darkness to his right, someone was looming over Riddle’s bed.**

* * *

_And tell me if somehow, some of it remained, how long would you wait for me?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Harry: Oh hey I whacked heads with Riddle  
> Harry: and now my scars bleeding and he's screaming  
> Harry:  
> Harry: what a weird coincidence! no screw-y stuff happening there ahah!  
> The Horcrux, Violently Screaming To This Weirdly Familiar Soul About This Super Great Thing Called Positive Emotions and Unequivocally Fucking Tom Up For Life:   
> 


End file.
